AN INTRODUCTION 



TO 



GREEK AND LATIN ETYMOLOGY. 



FEINTED BY C. J. ULAY, M.A. 
AT THE UNIVERSITY PKESS. 



AN INTRODUCTION 



TO 



GREEK AND LATIN ETYMOLOGY. 



JOHN PEILE, M.A. 

FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF CIIRISrs COLLEGE, 

FORMERLY TEACHER OF SANSKRIT IS THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CAMBRIDGE. 



Honfcon an& <£ambu&<je: 
MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1869. 

[All Right* reserved.] 




PREFACE 



These Lectures are the result of notes made during my reading in 
the last three or four years. As these notes increased, I thought 
that what had been very interesting to me might possibly have 
some interest for others, and therefore I put them into the shape 
of lectures which were delivered at Christ's College during the last 
May term, as one set in the "Intercollegiate" list. They are now 
printed with some additions and modifications, but substantially 
as they were delivered. Those who have studied the subject will 
see at once how much I have availed myself of the labours of 
others. I have endeavoured to state fully all my obligations : if I 
have ever omitted to do so, it has been through inadvertence. In 
the arrangement of the matter I have used my own judgment, as 
also on dubious points : but in general I have given nothing but 
what is certain : anything further would be out of place in a hand- 
book for beginners, which is all that these lectures profess them- 
selves to be. I am most indebted to Professor Curtius, a writer 
whose learning, insight, and admirable judgment, it is impossible 
to praise too highly: his Grundzilge der Griechischen Etymologic 



vi PREFACE. 

has been constantly before me : I have certainly learnt more from 
it than from any one book which I ever read. His Tempora und 
Modi is also most valuable as an introduction to the history of the 
verb-formations: these results however (some of which have been 
since withdrawn) do not come much within the plan of this book, 
which deals with the phonetic rather than with the formative part 
of language. His little " Essay on the results of Comparative Phi- 
lology in reference to Classical Scholarship" has been translated 
into English, but is now, I believe, out of print: it states briefly 
and forcibly the importance of these results to Greek and Latin 
scholars, and I have often quoted from it. Hardly less valuable 
for Latin than the works of Curtius for Greek are Corssen's Aus- 
sprache Vokalismus und Betonung der Lateinischen Sprache 1 , and his 
Kritische Beitrage zur Lateinischen Formenlehre: in learning and 
accuracy these books are worthy rivals of the Grundzilge; though 
sometimes we seem to miss in them the master-hand. I have 
made considerable use of Leo Meyer's Vergleichende Grammatik 
der Griech. und Latein. Sprache: this author differs much in mat- 
ters of detail and sometimes in principle from the other two, but 
his suggestions, and especially his full list of words, are very useful. 
I have sometimes availed myself of Professor Benfey's Griechisches 
Wurzel-Lexikon, and still more of his Kurze Sanskrit Grammatik, 
which is the model of a special grammar adapted to the use of a 
student of comparative philology: indeed it is to Professor Benfey 
that I owe my first introduction to this science, as well as almost 
all I know of Sanskrit: and I desire most gratefully to acknow- 
ledge here my debt to him, which is much greater than appears in 
this book. Ahrens' volumes Be Graecae Linguae Dialectis are 

1 The second edition of this work is greatly enlarged and improved, but only 
the first volume has yet appeared: references to it are marked by the figure 2, 
e.g. i 2 . 96. 



PREFACE. vii 

well known as the standard work on the subject. Among works 
on general philology, I am most indebted to Schleicher's Compen- 
dium der Vergleichenden Grammatik : this is a most valuable sum- 
mary of the results of comparative philology, and those parts 
which bear on the Greek and Latin languages would well repay 
translation, though they would lose by being separated from the 
parallel forms of other languages. I have made some use of the 
Etymologische Forschungen of Professor Pott, the most learned, 
ingenious, and dogmatic of etymologists : I have also availed my- 
self of his treatise on Doppelung (Reduplication). Several sug- 
gestions are due to Pictet's Origines Indo-Europeennes : and to 
different articles in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, and other periodicals. 
Bopp's Comparative Grammar relates principally to forms, and 
therefore has not been much used : but his main results, so far as 
they have been verified by later researches, have been assumed 
here, as they must be by all writers on the subject. My other 
slighter obligations will be mentioned in their place. It is hardly 
necessary for an Englishman to say how much he owes to Pro- 
fessor Max Miiller. 

I believe that none of the works I have mentioned have been 
translated into English, with the exception of Bopp's Grammar 
and Curtius' little Essay. Consequently they are so little gene- 
rally known among us that it may be asked what they have done 
to make them worth our notice. Briefly then the value of works 
such as those of Curtius and Corssen is this : they have shewn how 
much may be accomplished by applying the method and results 
of Comparative Philology to particular languages. Comparative 
Philology gives us the ultimate forms of Indo-European roots and 
suffixes, sometimes of actual words, by putting together and com- 
paring parallel forms in different languages. This work for all 
practical purposes is now accomplished. Even a Glossary of the 



viii PREFACE. 

Indo-European speech has appeared at Gottingen. The results 
are ready for application to particular languages, to serve as the 
basis for new investigation, for which they are indispensable. But 
these results are not sufficient for the Greek or the Latin etymo- 
logist. Together with the general science of comparative philology, 
we require special sciences of the special languages. These must 
be studied for themselves, but in the light of the general science. 
Minute and patient investigation of the laws of each several lan- 
guage is needed now as much as ever; but it must be made in a 
wider spirit. Every language has varied from the prototype : and 
for the most part varied in its own peculiar way. There are some 
general laws which regulate change of sound in all languages : 
these are given by the general science. But there are other 
changes which are found only in one or two languages : and these 
must be carefully traced within the province of the particular lan- 
guage. Above all they must never be assumed in one language 
because they are found in another. A phonetic change is not 
necessary in Latin because it is found in Greek: or in Greek be- 
cause it occurs in Sanskrit : though the changes of Sanskrit may 
throw, and actually have thrown, most valuable light on those of 
other languages. As I said above, each language must be studied 
for and in itself in the light of Comparative Philology : and this is 
just what Curtius and Corssen have done for Greek and Latin 1 . 

It may be asked whether we can arrive at certain results by 
this method. I have said that the comparative philologist, or the 
Greek philologist who works in the same spirit, puts together fact 
with fact. His method is inductive : and when his data are suf- 

1 How much may be done by a sound method even within one single language 
has been well shewn in Buttmann's Lexilogus, which must long remain a standard 
work in spite of errors unavoidable at the time when it was written. If Buttmann 
had lived later he would have been one of the first to acknowledge the excellence of 
a method which in spirit is identical with his own. 



PREFACE. ix 

ficient, his conclusions are as certain as those of any other induc- 
tive science. Where the evidence is insufficient he only arrives at 
a certain degree of probability, just as in any other science. Thus 
sometimes we cannot discover the ultimate root to which, for ex- 
ample, some isolated Greek word is to be referred, because the 
words which seem to correspond in other languages are too uncer- 
tain, either as to form or as to sense; and we must have agreement 
in both before we can speak of a certain relationship. Sometimes 
the word before us points about equally to two roots, each equally 
possible phonetically: here we must be content to leave the point 
undecided, and forego the advantage of knowing the history of the 
word. Sometimes we find exceptions to well established rules — 
just as in any other science: here again we must wait for further 
knowledge. In all these cases we can only get a varying amount 
of probability. But these do not affect the proposition that Com- 
parative Philology — general or special — is a science whose conclu- 
sions vary from being certain to being only probable, exactly in 
accordance with the amount of evidence. 

This being so, the way in which etymological questions are 
often treated in England is surely much to be regretted. Many 
of our scholars betray no knowledge whatever of the progress 
which has been made in this science. Some of those whose sub- 
ject leads them most to these questions deal with them as though 
there were no such science at all, but to etymologise correctly 
were the luck of the best guesser. Thus one who is deservedly 
•d in the foremost rank of Cambridge scholars, Mr F. A. Palcy, 
writes in the preface to his edition of the Iliad (page x.), "In mat- 
where we can hardly go beyond conjecture, some licence may 
'lowed in speculating on the origins, meanings, and connections 
of words." 

Accordingly, Mi- Paley gives in his notes numerous derivations 

b 



x PREFACE. 

which he candidly says are not " put forward with any desire to 
dogmatise," but which are yet purely arbitrary, often with no evi- 
dence derived from Greek or other languages, and with no hint of 
a standard by which their probability can be judged. Indeed, if I 
understand him right, Mr Paley implicitly denies such a standard 
in a note in which he illustrates his meaning. He there says : 

" Mr Gladstone, for instance, thinks tcrjXov, ' an arrow,' is con- 
nected with telum, and <f>rjpe<; (11. i. 268) with epa, terra (' Studies,' 
i. pp. 510, 575). I think that icrfkov, with kolXov, "wood," and 
some other kindred words, is from the digammated root of kclIco 
and <£?7pe? from an ancient word Fap or ?7jp, the Latin Vir, the . 
English War; and we are both entitled to hold our own opinions." 
The last sentence breathes a most liberal spirit : I am sorry 
that I must emphatically protest against it. I take it for granted 
that Mr Paley does not merely mean that all men are entitled to 
hold their own opinions on etymology in the same sense in which 
I am entitled to hold that the sun goes round the earth, as no 
doubt I am ; but if I taught so, I should be thought an unsafe 
guide. The meaning surely is, that there is no reason, apart from 
the judgment of the individual holder, why one opinion should be 
more true on these points than any other — no external standard 
to determine their relative probability. This is a new application 
of the old irdvTcov /uuerpov avOpcoiro^. Mr Paley indeed is here 
unjust to himself. In both cases his etymology is many times 
more probable. To say that the chances are a thousand to one 
against tcfjXov being connected with telum does not quite measure 
. the improbability ; because, so far as I know, t is never the Latin 
representative of k in the original or in any derived language 1 . 

1 The change of the termination -cio into -tio is not in point: the c passes 
into t through the assimilating influence of the i (y); and therefore this could be 
no proof of a simple substitution of t for k (c). Besides it only appears many 
centuries later. 



PREFACE. xi 

If some one said that he had found a belemnite in the coal- 
measures, I think that geologists would wish a good many more 
belemnites to be discovered before they believed much in the 
finding of that particular one ; not that the thing is physically 
impossible, but because all experience has shewn that belemnites 
are not found in so old a stratum. My feeling is just the same. 
I want a good many more indisputable cases of the change of 
k into t iri1& Latin before I believe that telum has anything 
to do with ktjXov. Mr Paley's derivation of icqXov from KAF is 
quite possible phonetically, though I should rather have expected 
the final V (F) to have passed into U before the soft X: and as 
to the sense, if icrfkov first meant firewood, as it must have done 
if it comes from KAF, it seems odd that it should come to mean 
an " arrow." Now since there is in Sanskrit a noun gal-yam 
meaning an " arrow," which can be derived by regular Sanskrit 
phonetic change from a possible root KAL : and since this same 
KAL would appear also perfectly regularly in the Latin cel-lere, 
u to strike ; " I prefer to derive, as is also quite in accordance 
with rule, /crjXov from the same root, as suiting better both in form 
and sense 1 . But I quite concede that between the two deriva- 
tions the question is one of probability : the forms in other lan- 
guages parallel to KrfXov are too few to make the derivation here 
given at all certain. I cannot indeed allow the same of Mr Paley's 
derivation of <£rp, which I hold to be phonetically impossible : 
</> so far as I know is never a substitute for original V, though in 
Borne excessively rare cases (as crepe from original sva) it may have 
been produced by assimilation, which is a very different matter 2 . 

1 Sec Curtius, Griechische Ehjmolofjir, p. 137. 

a I know that Dr Donaldson (New Crat. § 110) says " it is clear that p must 
originally have been the aspirate of the labials, namely bh or hb." But he never 
proves it: and it is certain, by comparison of the different Indo-European languages, 
that p represents original V, and that alone, bee pp. 78 — 81. 

b2 



xii PREFACE. 

In other cases however Mr Paley suggests without any real 
proof a derivation of his own (as I believe) for words which can be 
certainly proved to come from a different root. Thus in his note 
to II. xi. 1 he says, "the root of 'Hco? is aF, the same as in drjp, 
dr]T7)^, and connected with FaF ((fidos)." I leave this last terrible 
combination of sound — which would appear in English letters as 
"waw," and is scarcely adapted, as all the primitive roots were, 
to human organs — only saying that cfrdos can be safely traced 
from BHAV, a lengthened form of BBA, " to shine ; " and proceed 
to the supposed aF in tJoj?, where Mr Paley assumes, as I think 
he always does, that the letter which he rightly supposes to have 
fallen out between 77 and co must have been the digamma. But 
there is not the smallest ground for such an assumption ; and in 
this case it can be demonstrated that the letter so lost was not 
F but <t. The simpler form of ?)©? is preserved in the Aeolic avcos. 
The "morning" in Sanskrit is ush-as, in Latin Aurora. Do these 
words, which have the same meaning, agree in form also ; not of 
course judged by mere identity of sound, which is no guide at all, 
but according to the phonetic laws of their respective languages ? 
They do ; and all point distinctly to the root US "to burn." This 
appears as USff in Sanskrit ; from which ushas is regularly formed, 
with no vowel-modification. The Graeco-Italian people raised the 
vowel by regular process to au 1 , and formed ausos : which received 
no further increase in Greek, but in Latin a secondary noun was 
formed from the primary one, that is, ausos-a. Now both Greeks 
and Italians, as is well known, disliked the sound s between two 
vowels: the Greeks generally dropped it, and so got here av(a)co^: 
the Latins changed it to r, and made A itrora 3 ; the verb appears 
as uro. Every change here is in strict accordance with ascertained 

1 See pp. 119—122. 2 g ee p> 232 . 

3 Sec p. 238. 



PREFACE, xiii 

laws ; the words compared agree both in sense and form ; and 
more parallel forms could be given from the Teutonic and the 
Lithuanian 1 . What more evidence can be required for a certain 
derivation ? And in the face of facts like these, to state positively 
(whether dogmatically or not), that " the root of 'Hw? is aF," is 
surely not likely to advance our knowledge of etymology ; an object 
which I am certain Mr Paley has warmly at heart. No one at 
Cambridge has written so much on the subject. And it is because 
the errors of our best men are most misleading ; because I cordially 
admire Mr Paley's taste and learning ; because I thoroughly sym- 
pathise with his endeavours to widen the reading of our students 
here, that I write as I have done. I have no choice. If Mr 
Paley's view (as I understand it) be true, then my book has no * 
reason for existence. My sole object is to lay down certain de-yr 
finite principles of change in Greek and Latin, which must be our 
constant guide in etymology. Mr Paley apparently in theory, and 
certainly in practice, ignores these principles. 

By the recent changes in the Classical Tripos, " Philology " has 
become the subject of a separate paper. The term is rather 
general; but it has been defined, at least for the present, by the 
books which have been recommended by the Board of Classical 
Studies. They include two distinct subjects ; first, scientific 
etymology, secondly, the higher criticism of the usage of the 
Greek and Latin languages. The latter subject has always been 
to some extent studied among us; indeed, accurate knowledge of 
the usages of these two languages, within certain fixed limits of 
time, has been the one necessary result of our Cambridge training 
in our best men. Now our students are to be required to know 
something more — something of the history of these languages. 
Whether such study will be beneficial to all minds is perhaps 

1 See Curtius, Gr. Et. p. 358. 



xiv PREFACE. 

doubtful; but at all events it is something to ensure that no 
man shall pass three years and a half at Cambridge without 
increasing in any respect the stock of ideas which he brought 
from school. 

If the new scheme for the Tripos prove successful, it seems 
probable that some change will be necessary in the teaching of 
grammar in schools. Those boys who are intended for Cambridge 
must be taught not merely the facts of grammar, but as far as 
possible the reasons for them. No doubt it is difficult in a book 
intended for schools to arrange the matter in such a way as to 
satisfy the logic of grammar, without being etymological] y mis- 
leading ; an arrangement of the nouns and verbs as found in actual 
use rarely coincides with a historical classification of them. Still 
much has been done of late to remove from grammars statements 
which gave an absolutely false view of the origin of the forms ; and 
more might yet be done. I think it is not impossible that a 
Greek or a Latin grammar might be written on the principle of 
Prof. Benfey's Kurze Sanskrit Grammatik already mentioned, 
which should give th e declensions, &c. arranged as far as possible 
with reference to their formation and history ; while that history 
might be more fully developed in notes in smaller print, which 
could be read when the boy was ripe for them. These notes should 
contain nothing which is merely speculative, only well ascertained 
facts ; and such a work could at any time be brought up to the 
existing state of linguistic science. 

I have only to say in conclusion, that I shall gladly welcome 
the correction of any erroi^s which may be found in this book. I 
fear that there may be many, but I hope that they will be found 
in details rather than in principles. My excuse for them must be 
that these Lectures were written at different times — some of them 
two years ago — and indeed almost entirely at such intervals as 



PREFACE. xv 

I could secure between other work. I have intentionally omitted 
some rather rare and unimportant changes, because within the limits 
which seemed desirable for an introductory work, it would have 
been impossible to describe them without giving them an undue 
relative prominence. 

Trumpington, Oct, 18, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 

Nature of phonetic change, 1. Its cause, 3. Results of this law of 
change, 4. Peculiar causes of different changes in different languages, 6. 
The importance of this principle, 7. Apparent exceptions, 9. Different 
theories upon this subject, 11. Note on the derivation of Latin words from 
Greek, 14. 



THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN 
PEOPLES. 

Our starting point the Indo-European language, 17. Classification of the 
Indo-European people, 18. Their degrees of relationship, 20. Is this 
original people properly called Aryan? 22. Importance sometimes erro- 
neously given to Sanskrit, 23. What is a "root "? 26. Connection between 
roots and ideas, 27. Definition of a root, 28. Each language has its own 
roots, 29. 



III.) THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 

The original alphabet, 31. Extension of the vowels, 32. This increase 
of sound was qualitative not quantitative, 33. Consonantal change was 
regularly phonetic, not dynamic, 35. Examples of Indo-European alpha- 
bets, 37. 

I. Momentary sounds, 37 — 67. 

1. Hard momentary sounds, K, 37. T, 40. P, 44. 

2. Soft momentary sounds, G, 47. D, 50. B, 53. 

IV.) 3. Aspirates, 55. Did the original languago possess hard as m II 

as soft aspirates? 56. GH, 60. DH, 61. DII, 64. 

Possibility of some of our words being older than tin 
Indo-European roots, 68 



xviii CONTENTS. 

II. Protracted sounds, 67 — 86. 

1. Nasals, N, 68. M, 70. Composition of the Indo-European 

suffixes, 72. 

2. Spirants, 73. T, 75. S, 76. V, 78. 

3. Liquids, 81. B, 82. L, 85. Concluding remarks, 86. 

Note on the Indo-European division of the year, 89 . 



(Lect.V.) DYNAMIC CHANGE. 

Dynamic change briefly considered in order to distinguish its results 
from those of Phonetic change, 91. The principal methods — Eeduplication 
and Vowel- Intensification: possibly also Nasalisation, 93. 

REDUPLICATION. 

Eeduplication the oldest and simplest method, 95. Evidence of this 
derived from the language of savages and of children, ib. General 
traces of the principle : Eeduplication in imitative words, and 
in alliteration, 97. Slight traces in the formation of superlatives, 
100. Eegular formation of frequentatives or intensives, 101. Em- 
ployed to distinguish protracted from momentary action, 103. 

VO WEL-INTENSIFICA TION. 

The intensified vowel-forms differ in different languages, 109. Most 
recognisable in Sanskrit and most regularly employed there, 110. 
Vowel-scales in Gothic, 112; and in Lithuanian, 113; in Greek 
and Latin, ib. 

(i) The A-scale, 113— 118. 

Difficulty of distinguishing the two steps, 114. Different 
methods of distinguishing them in Greek, 115; especially 
the employment of the existing division of A into a, e, o, 
115. Traces of the same method in Latin, 116. Advantage 
of the different symbols for long vowels in the Greek, 117. 
Quantitative increase, ib. 

(ii) The I-scale, H8-121. 

Occurrence of ai as an intensified form of i, 119. 

(iii) The U-scale, 121-122. 

U intensified to au. 




CONTENTS. xix 



PHONETIC CHANGE. 

Phonetic change due to two causes — Weak Articulation and Indistinct 
Articulation, 123. Nature of the changes caused by Weak Articulation, ib. 
Latin — not Indo-European — letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets, 127. 
Pronunciation of the vowels, 128. 



Lect.VII.) 



Lect.VIII.) 



I. VOWEL-CHANGE, 129—214. 

Substitution, 129—175. 

1. Splitting of the A-sound (A=a, e, o), 129—138. 

Found throughout Europe, 130. History of the change from 
A to e, 131. The change from A to o less frequent 
before the Graeco-Italian period, 133. Application of 
the new vowels, 131. Especial gain of the Greek lan- 
guage hereby, 135. Traces of similar division of A, 137. 

2. Greek Diphthongs (AI = at, ei, oi; AU = au, eu, ov), 139 — 149. 

Diphthongs were originally double sounds, 139. History of 
the change of dissimilar diphthongs in Greek, 140. Ten- 
dency to drop the second vowel, the first being sometimes 
modified, 141. Greek at, 142. Greek et, ib. Greek ot, 143. 
Greek av, ib. Greek ov, ib. Greek ev, 144. Diphthongs 
with first vowel long, ib. Similar diphthongs, ib. 



Latin Diphthongs (&l = ai, ei, oi; AU = au, eu, ou), 149 — 157. 
Latin ai, 149. Latin ei, 150. Latin oi, 153. Latin au, 154. 
Latin eu, 156. Latin ou, 156. 



Weakening of U in Greek (U = upsilon), 158. 

Further Vowel substitution in Greek (sporadic), 159 — 161. 

(i) Weakening of A to i, 160. 

(ii) Weakening of A to u 161. 

(iii) Weakening of U to i, 161. 

6. Further Vowel substitution in Latin, 162 — 175. 

Peculiar weakness of the Latin vowel-system, 162. Contrast 
between the Greek and the Latin, 163. 

(i) Weakening of formative syllables, 164. 

(ii) Weakening in composition, 169—173. (a) of the first 

number of the compounds, 169 ; (b) of the second, 170. 
(iii) Weakening in reduplicated forms, 173 — 175. (a) of the 

reduplicated syllable, 173; (b) of the radical syllable, 174. 

IX.) Vowel change modified by external causes— hardly at all in Greek, but 

frequently in Latin, 170. Principle of Assimilation and Dissimilation, 178. 



xx CONTENTS. 

II. Assimilation, 179—187. 

1. Vowel assimilation caused by consonants, 179 — 185. 

(i) The vowel u, 179. 
(ii) The vowel e, 182. 
(iii) The vowel i, 183. 

2. Vowel assimilation caused by vowels, 185 — 187. 

Apparent influence of the vowel i, 187. 

ill. Dissimilation, 187—190. 

Less frequent in its operation ; acts principally as a bar to 
further change, 188. 

(Lect.X.) IV. LOSS, 191— 214. 

1. Loss of Greek vowels, 191 — 193. 

Probably produced by greater freedom of the accent at an 
earlier period, 191. 

2. Loss of Latin vowels, 193 — 214. 

Loss of a, 194 ; of o, ib. ; of u, ib. ; of e, 195 ; of i, 196 ; I is 
especially lost in compounds, 198. Are these lost vowels 
those of the unaccented syllables? 199. Common law of 
accentuation, 200. Accent depends on the quantity of 
the penultima, 201. Ke-action of accent upon quantity, 
202. Cases which contradict the common law, and can 
only be explained by an older different one, 203. Ac- 
centuation in other languages, 204. Middle stage in 
Latin between a vowel fully sounded and entirely lost, 
206. Loss in the final syllable arising from its never 
being accented, 208 — 214. Loss in quantity, 209. Loss 
in quantity when the final consonant was lost, 210. 
Loss in originally final vowels, 212. Absolute loss in 
the final syllable, wholly or partly, 213, 

(Lect.XI.) II. CONSONANTAL CHANGE, 215—280. 

Superiority of the Greek over the Latin thus far manifested, 215. 
Greater strength of the Latin consonants, 216. General rules to determine 
the relative strength of the consonants, 217. Momentary sounds stronger 
than protracted, ib. Hard sounds stronger than soft, each in its own 
class, 218. Unaspirated sounds stronger than the corresponding aspirates, 
ib. The gutturals the strongest of the different classes, 219. General 
rules hardly possible for protracted sounds, 221. Among the nasals m may 
be stronger than n, ib. Of the spirants, y is the strongest ; h is the weakest 
in Greek, ib. In Greek and Latin s is stronger than r, ib. 



CONTENTS. xxi 

I. Substitution, 222—247. 

1. Change of hard letters to soft, 222—226. 

Change of K to 7 and g, 222, 223. Peculiar change of the 
hard guttural in Latin, 223. Change of T to 5 and d, 
224. Change of P to &, 225. 

2. Further substitution for momentary sounds, 226, 227. 

Change of D to I in Latin, 226. Change of D to r, 227. 

3. Substitution for Spirants, 227—240. 

A. Greek substitutes for the Spirants, 227 — 236. 

(a) Changes of Y in Greek, 228—230. 
(i) Y=£, 228. 

(ii) Y=e, 229. 

(iii) Y = the rough breathing, 229. 

(iv) Y is lost, ib. 

(b) Changes of S, 230—232. 
(i) S = (T, 230. 

(ii) S = rough breathing, ib. 
(iii) S is lost, 232. 

(c) Changes of V, 232—236. 
(i) V=F, 232. 

(ii) V=u, 233. 

(iii) V = rough breathing, 234. 

(iv) V=/S,i6. 

(v) V=ai, 235. 

B. Latin substitutes for the Spirants, 236 — 240. 

(a) Changes of Y in Latin, 23C — 237. 
(i) Y = i, 236. 

(ii) Y is lost, 237. 

(b) ChaDges of S, 237—239. 
(i) S = s, 237. 

(ii) S = r, 238. Old Latin and Italian Z, 239. 
(iii) S is lost, ib. 

(c) Changes of V, 239, 210. 
(i) Y = n, 239. 

(ii) V is lost, ib. V not=?>i, 240. 

(d) Changes of the Aspirates in Latin, 240—247. 

The Latin aspirate /, 210. F represents 
original 13H and DH at the beginning of a word, 
241. In Latin the h was commonly dropped in 
the middle of a word, 212. Changes of GH, 
244. The aspirates when initial pass into 



xxii CONTENTS, 

breaths, when medial into soft letters, ib. 
Explanation of the appearance of the soft 
letters, 245. 
(Lect.XII.) II. LOSS, 248-261. 

1. Loss of aspiration in Greek, 248. 

2. Loss of one or more out of a group of consonants, 250—261. 

Possible origin of these groups, 250. 

(i) Initial loss ; principally of S and V both in Greek 
and Latin, 251. Further loss in Latin, 253. Loss 
of initial C when standing alone, 254. 

(ii) Medial loss : hardly found in Greek, 255 ; common 
and irregular in Latin, ib. 

(iii) Final loss, 256. Monotony of consonantal termina- 
tions in Greek, 257. Greater range in Latin, 259. 
Loss of final s, ib. Loss of final m, 260. Loss 
of final t, 261. 

(Lect.xiii.) iii. Assimilation, 262— 279. 

1. The Greek Aspirates, 262—266. 

Pronunciation of the Greek Aspirates, 263. Probably they 
were not sounded as Spirants, ib. Arguments to prove 
they were really aspirate-sounds, 264. 

2. General rules of Assimilation in Greek, 266 — 274. 

A. . Complete Assimilation, 266 — 271. 

(i) Assimilation of the first sound, 267. 

(ii) Assimilation of the second sound, ib. 

(iii) Modification of both sounds when the first is a 
hard guttural or dental, 268. There is no such 
change of a labial, 270. Change of a soft guttural 
or dental, 271. 

B. Incomplete Assimilation, 272 — 274. 
(i) "Euphonic" changes, 272. 
(ii) Changes caused by nasals, ib. 
(iii) Changes of nasals, ib. 

(iv) Change of T to cr, ib. 

(v) Change of 6 to a (Laconian), 273. 

(vi) Changes of v, ib. 

(vii) Other exceptional forms, ib. 

3. General rules of Assimilation in Latin, 275 — 279. 

A. Complete Assimilation, 275, 276. 

(i) Assimilation of the first letter, 275. 
(ii) Assimilation of the second letter, ib. 
(iii) Modification of both sounds, ib. 



CONTENTS. 



B. Incomplete Assimilation, 276 — 279. 
(i) "Euphonic" changes, 276. 
(ii) Changes caused by nasals, ib. 
(hi) Change of t to s, ib. Assibilation of c and t a later 
change, 277. 

IV. Dissimilation, 279, 280. 

1. Change of dentals, 279. 

2. Loss of aspiration (Greek), and of initial reduplicated conso- 

nant, ib. 

3. Interchange of -aris and -alis, 280. 

INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. 

Effect of want of clearness in pronunciation, 281 — 310. 

1. Labialism, 283—289. 

Change of K to ir and p, 283. Possibility of this change, ib. 
Caused by parasitic v, 285. History of Latin Q, 287. 
Change of G to /3 and &, 288. Change of GH to 0, 289. 

2. Dentalism, 290—293. 

Change of K to r, 290. Change of G to 5, 292. Change of 
GH to d, ib. Change of D to 6, ib. 

Parasitic d before y or i, 293 — 298. 
Y with parasitic 5 appears 
(i) as £ 294 ; 
(ii) as 8t, 295 ; 
(iii) as de, ib.; 

(iv) as 5, ib. Estimate of the probability of these 
changes, 297. 
Parasitic y, 298. 
Aspiration, 299—304. 

Involuntary aspiration of hard letters found in Sanskrit and 
in Greek, 299. No certain examples of aspiration of soft 
sounds, 300. Aspiration in Greek and Latin at the 
beginning of a word, 301. 

Auxiliary letters, 304—310. 

(a) Vowels, most common in Greek, 304 — 309. 

(i) Initial vowels, 305. Very rare before an explosive 

sound, 306. 
(ii) Medial vowels, ib. The " connecting vowel," 307. 

Auxiliary vowels in Latin, 308. 

(b) Auxiliary consonants, 309. 
Conclusion, 310. 



3. 



6. 



EXPLANATION OF SYMBOLS. 

In Sanskrit words, ch andj denote the same sounds as in English. 
c denotes the palatal sibilant. 
n „ palatal nasal. 

m ,, anusvdra or "after-sound". 

In Lithuanian words, u denotes o followed by weak a. 

a &c. denotes vowels followed by a supposed nasal. 
z denotes weak j. 

sz denotes sell, which sound in Sclavonic words is 
denoted by s. 











EBEATA. 


Page 3, 


line 


12, 


for 


dumi 


read 


dumi. 


— 11 


— 


24 


— 


dialect 


— 


dialects 


— 46 


— 


16 


— 


weal 


— . 


meal 


— 47 


— 


27 


— 


Lith. 


— 


Sclav. 


— 53 


— 


26 


— 


bleja 


— 


bleja. 


— 60 


— 


14 dele 


vegos 






— ib. 


— 


ib. 


for 


vez-imas 


read 


vezimas 


— ib. 


— 


15 


— 


five 


— 


four 


— ib. 


— 


26 


— 


zole 


— 


zole 


— 63 


— 


26 


— 


dusa 


— 


dusa 


— 69 


— 


13 


— 


snegas 


— 


snegas 


— ib. 


— 


19 


— 


zema 


— 


zema 


— 75 


— 


8 


— 


frvyop 


— 


fyyov 


— 76 


— 


16 


— 


bhuyams 


— 


bhuyams 


— 110 


— 


6 


— 


Vriddhi 


— 


Vriddhi 


— 118 


— 


28 after 


"&n/ca for pepot/ca," add— 


— 132 


— 


8 


for 


aszutni 


read 


asztuni. 


_ 134 


— 


1 


— 


8kto) 


— 


6kt(1). 


— 135 


— 


15 


— 


'i-rrra 


— 


inTa. 


— 146 


— 


24 


— 


€ 


— 


V- 


— 207 


— 


16 


— 


dcxtera 


— 


dextera. 


— 230 


— 


19 


— 


crraros 


— 


ffTClTOS 


— 231 note, 


line 2 for 


more 


— 


mere 


— 237 


margin 


— 


S=s 


— 


S = s 


— 259 


margin 


— 


finals 


— 


final s 



-See however page 233. 



INTRODUCTION TO GREEK AND LATIN 
ETYMOLOGY. 



LECTURE I. 



THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 



The principal subject of these lectures will be the Laws of Nature of 
Phonetic Change in Greek and Latin. Probably the term Change. 
will require explanation. Let me illustrate what I mean 
by an example or two. 

Almost any word will serve our purpose. Take the 
Greek verb BiScd/m, and analyse it. Beginning with the last 
syllable fju, we have a combination of sound, which a little 
comparison with other words in Greek or other languages 
(Sanskrit and Lithuanian) will convince us, denotes the pro- 
noun of the first person " I." This comparison will shew us 
that the syllable is sometimes reduced to the mere consonant 
m ; thus we have in Latin sum, inqiiam; and if we observe 
that the 1st person singular of the imperfect in Latin (e.g. 
fereba-m) compared with the same person in Greek (efapov) 
always shews an m in the one language by an v in the other, 
P. L. 1 



2 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

we shall conclude that for some reason or other the Greeks 
could change this older m into a later v. But further, by 
comparison, we shall see reason to believe that this fit of the 
Greeks is not the oldest form of the syllable; that as it sank 
into m or n, so it had previously descended from an older 
form ma: I say " descended," for it is clear to any one who 
attempts the sounds, that a is a fuller and stronger sound 
than i. One piece of this evidence is the termination. of the 
1st person plural, which is //,e? in (Doric) Greek, mus in 
Latin, but mas in Sanskrit (a form which a probable analy- 
sis explains as ma + sa or I -{-he, i. e. we; tas is ta + sa or thou 
+ he = ye) ; and as we shall find that in Greek e often comes 
from a, and in Latin u from a, but not vice versa, we shall 
infer (from this and other indications which I have not time 
to dwell upon more) that this fit is traceable to an older and 
stronger form ma. But — and this is the point I want you 
to observe — it is clear that the change of sound was not in- 
tended to imply any change of meaning; ma meant I, and 
the meaning was kept by the weakest and most degraded 
form of the syllable; not of course that the Greek who said 
efyepov was conscious every time that the v had originally been 
the personal pronoun ; the pronoun had sunk with the lapse 
of time into a mere grammatical suffix ; but efyepov still sig- 
nified " I carried," and conveyed the same idea to the hearer 
of that day, as when the words "there-carry-I" established 
their claim to be selected out of many others which would 
have done as well, or nearly as well, to express the action 
of carrying in past time. Here then, I repeat, the new 
sound was not meant to convey a new meaning. 

Let us now take the second syllable Sco. Here we have 
long o. But we have $o-cris, hoir^p, even hi-ho-fiev in the first 
pers. plur.; and if we look at similar verbs tarvfii, riOrjfu, we 
shall see the same long vowel only in the sing, of the verb. 
We shall conclude therefore that for some reason this vowel 



I.] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 3 

became lengthened in these three persons from a simpler 
form Bo, which conveys the simple idea of giving. Here we 
shall at present be in some doubt whether any change of 
meaning was thereby expressed . Let us pass to the first 
syllable where we shall find the explanation more easily. 
First of all a comparison with the Sk. daddmi will shew us 
that the Greek Bl is not the oldest form of the syllable, but 
that (just as in the last syllable) da has been weakened to 
Bt. But why this first syllable at all ? Why could not the 
Hindus and Greeks have said dami or Bofxt to express I 
give, just as the Sclavonians said dami, the Lithuanians 
du-mi, and the Latins do (for da-o)1 One thing is quite 
clear, dada cannot be a weakened form of da: it requires 
much more labour to pronounce; and this labour could not 
have been taken except for an object. We are of necessity 
forced upon the conclusion that a change of meaning was 
intended by the doubled sound. What change, I hope to 
tell you another day. At present, let us be content with 
the result to which our analysis leads us, that in the word 
BlBcd/uu are exemplified the results of two radically different 
principles of change ; the one b}^ which a change of meaning- 
is intended to be expressed; the other by which no such 
change of meaning is intended. Both changes are seen in 
the first syllable Be, the last only in the last syllable fit. 
The first class of changes I call dynamic; the second I call 
phonetic. 

What is the motive for this latter change? The reason Its cause. 
seems to have been twofold, though each caused the same 
result. We saw above that the operation of this law of 
change was to weaken the older form; that is, to change it 
to something which required less effort to produce. 

And the general cause of this change can have been 
nothing else but the striving for ease in articulation; the 
endeavour to facilitate utterance by substituting a simpler 

1—2 



4 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

instead of a more difficult sound or sounds; the natural desire 
to reduce the word to such a form as may express the idea 
with the least possible amount of labour consistent with 
clearness. This principle is put very well by Prof. Whitney 
in his Lectures on the Study of Language, p. 69. "All articu- 
late sounds," he says, " are produced by effort, by expendi- 
ture of muscular energy in the throat, lungs, and mouth. 
This effort, like every other that man makes, he has an in- 
stinctive disposition to seek relief from, to avoid: we may 
call it laziness, or we may call it economy : it is in fact either 
the one or the other according to the circumstances of each 
particular case : it is laziness when it gives up more than it 
gains: it is economy when it gains more than it abandons." 
Results of Let us take examples of such loss or gain. The Indo- 
change. European form of the 1 pers. sing, of the imperfect of bhar, 
"to bear," was abharami (Sk. abharam). Here the Greeks, 
as well as the Hindus, found the four-syllabled word too 
cumbrous for use: the accent probably fell upon the aug- 
ment, because by the augment was expressed the fact that 
the bearing was in the past time, and the syllable which ex- 
pressed this modification of the simple idea required empha- 
sis: in consequence then of this emphasis upon the first syl- 
lable, the % of the last became less and less distinctly heard, 
until it disappeared altogether, and abharami appears as 
abhara-m in Sanskrit, as efapo-v in Greek: where v repre- 
sents m by a phonetic law of the language, because the 
Greeks found v an easier sound than m at the end of a word. 
But the 3rd pers. plur. of the same tense was in the Indo- 
European abharanti: and this on the same principle was 
weakened in Sanskrit to abharan, in Greek to efepov. We 
see then, as the result, that whilst each language gained a 
lighter form by each change, the Sanskrit retained distinct 
forms, while the Greek did not: the difference between the 
1st person singular and the 3rd person plural had to be ex- 



I.] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 5 

pressed in some other way than by the grammatical forms : 
lightness was gained, but distinctness was sacrificed. In this 
case we must believe that the gain of lightness of pronunciation 
was felt to compensate for the loss of grammatical accuracy ; 
for where confusion was felt to arise, new distinctions were 
made, sometimes new forms arose; for example, the peri- 
phrastic tenses, formed by auxiliary verbs, a practice almost 
universal in modern languages, but found also in the San- 
skrit and the Greek. As Prof. Curtius puts it: "the pho- 
netic laws of some one tongue cause a certain form to perish ; 
but forthwith there springs up a new one to supply its place. 
The original wealth melts away, yet the creative power of 
language continues to produce new treasures. Differences 
arise from primary unity: and variations of form thus newly 
brought forth are employed to distinguish shades of signifi- 
cation 1 ." These various forms were turned to better account 
by the Greek than by any other language. We have given 
an example where phonetic change produced confusion in 
the Greek: let us now take one where the variety, resulting 
from the same principle, was employed with admirable suc- 
cess in differentiation of meaning. Thus the gen. sing, and 
the nom. and ace. plural of pad, " a foot," were all formed in 
Indo-European by the affix -as — padas. This is almost cer- 
tain from the fact that the Sanskrit never possessed any dif- 
ferent forms for the three cases: and if the requisite vowel- 
variety had existed in Indo-European, it is exceedingly im- 
probable that so conservative a language as the Sanskrit 
should have suffered it to die out. But if we turn to the 
Greek we find a very different state of things. In Greek, as 
in most of the European members of the family, the vowel a 
of the original speech was split up into the three sounds, a, 
e, and 0. This important change will be fully considered 

1 Essay on the Results of Comparative Philology in reference to 
Classical Scholarship, p. 31. 



6 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

hereafter. At present I only wish to say that it seems to 
have been in its origin purely phonetic: there is no reason to 
suppose that any change of meaning was intended to be ex- 
pressed by this change of sound. But these sounds, found 
ready to hand, were employed by the Greek with marvellous 
skill. Thus, in our present example, the original paclas 
could be differentiated into 7roSo? for the gen. sing., 7r6Se9 for 
the nom. plur., and 7r68a<; for the ace. plur. No confusion 
between the different cases was any longer possible. The 
weakening of a into a, e, o, was turned in this instance by 
the Greek into clear gain; as in many others which will be 
given in their place. At present I turn back from the re- 
sults of phonetic change, to repeat its cause — the desire for 
ease or saving of sound; and its general effect — to substitute 
a weaker for a stronger sound. This is not always so, for 
^reasons which I shall shortly point out ; but the new sound 
will always be an easier one to pronounce under the circum- 
stances in which it occurs. 
Peculiar It may perhaps be asked what causes determined the 

different different operation of this principle in different languages. 
changes in This question — which amounts to an enquiry into the causes 

different . . . 

languages, of diversity of language itself — cannot of course be fully 
answered here. No people has preserved unchanged all the 
letters of the original alphabet. Different peoples have modi- 
fied it in different ways from causes at which we can give 
probable guesses, but which we can never certainly know. 
Occasionally we may see in the altered alphabet something 
which seems to correspond to the genius of the people which 
spoke it, or to be due to the country, climate and general 
circumstances among which they were placed. Thus we may 
think that we can see in the flexibility of the Greek language 
the impress of the versatility of the Greek genius, and the 
effect of that Xafiirporaro^ alOrjp amid which at least the 
most brilliant section of the Greek family lived : whilst the 



L] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 7 

effect of the hot enervating climate of India may be seen in 
the numerous weakened forms of the consonants in Sanskrit. 
Thus lacking energy to bring the root of the tongue firmly 
against the back of the palate, the Hindus produced in some 
cases instead of the original k a peculiar sibilant, (denoted 
variously in philological works by s or c) the sound of which was 
probably something between the French c and the German ch. 1 
In like manner, probably through the influence of an adjoin- 
ing s, they weakened k into ch, and g into j, the sound of ch 
and j being much the same as in England. Such weakenings 
are especially common in Sanskrit : and that they are due to 
some extent to the climate of India would probably be denied 
by few. Yet the same weakenings are found in all countries, 
though perhaps not often to so great an extent. In England 
we see the same thing. In different parts of the island we 
find the hard k sound of the Roman castrum either retained, 
or weakened to ch or soft c: we have Caistor and Lancaster, 
but Manchester and Dorchester, and weakest of all Leicester 
and Gloucester. These doubtless represent the different dia- 
lects of heterogeneous tribes who* have been fused together 
in Britain; but the last two are nevertheless the result of a 
weaker articulation ; they are corruptions of the harder sound ; 
it is not a strengthened form of one of them. Similar cor- 
ruptions in English are our pronunciation of Ocean as Oshan, 
and Nature as Nachure, and thousands of others which will 
at once occur to every one. If the spelling in England were 
not in the main fixed by the standard of the literary dialect, 
these words would long ago have been written as they are 
pronounced. In countries where there is no literary dialect, 
or where there are several, but no one distinctly predominant, 
variation of spelling is the inevitable result. 

Now what is the importance of the principle of phonetic The im- 

change which I have stated ? Its importance is this — it is this princi- 
ple. 

1 See M. Muller, Lectures, II. p. 133. 



8 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

our one sure guide in etymology. "We learn from it that we 
must hold it a rule, never to derive a harder from an easier 
sound ; that a word which has retained a strong letter can 
only under exceptional circumstances be derived from 
another word which has a corresponding weaker letter. It 
shews, for example, that the Latin sus cannot possibly (in 
accordance with etymological theories not yet wholly ex- 
ploded) be derived from the Greek us ; simply because s is 
stronger than h; and the same reason — were there no other 
— could alone refute most of such supposed derivations. In- 
deed if either language could be derived from the other, 
scientific etymology would rather shew that the Greek was 
derived from the Latin 1 . 

General rules to determine the relative strength of dif- 
ferent letters can be obtained by physiological considerations 
and by historical investigation. Into the first I do not intend 
to enter : the student who wishes to do so will find sufficient 
to test his powers in Max Miiller's Lectures, Series II. chap. 3. 
But even without scientific investigation it is clear that, for 
example, h is a stronger sound than p; that is, that k de- 
mands a larger amount of muscular exertion to produce it 
with the same intensity as p\ the check is applied to the 
current of air issuing from the lungs at an earlier point in 
its course; and for this reason (with others less obvious) the 
sound requires more effort to pronounce. In harmony with 
this is the historical fact that in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and 
Gothic, the gutturals are found less frequently than the dentals 
or labials 2 ; and we should naturally expect those letters to 
be more sparingly used which required the largest amount of 
labour in production ; they would either be not employed at 
all, or would pass into easier sounds, or be altogether dropped, 
in words in much use, like pronouns, or in suffixes where 

1 See note at the end of this lecture. 

2 Curtius, Griechische Etymologic, p. 391, ed. 2. 



I.] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 9 

neatness and convenience were essential. By these two dis- 
tinct lines of reasoning we shall be led to infer that (to return 
to our present example) koZos is an older form than 7roto? ; 
that 7roto9 must be derived from atoio?, not vice versa. So in 
Latin where we find side by side the words coquina and popina, 
we shall conclude that popina is a later, probably dialectical, 
variation of coquina which at an early period fell out of use 
at Rome, but was originally, as Varro tells us, used for a 
kitchen ; and we shall see a possible reason for the change in 
the parasitic labial sound u which forms no part of either 
root or suffix, which had power to assimilate the final c of 
the root coc (whence cocus, &c), and so turn the guttural to a 
labial : which in turn assimilated also the initial c. 

The general principle of phonetic change, and the general 
directions which such change will take, are given by com- 
parative philology. But different peoples differed much in 
the extent to which they proceeded along these different 
paths of change. Thus the Greeks made but one variation 
in dealing with the original aspirates; then they stopped, and 
the Greek aspirates are used with as much regularity as those 
of the original language. The Italians on the contrary, feel- 
ing the aspirates too difficult sounds, allowed them to degrade 
so completely, that the single Italian spirant / represents not 
only the labial aspirate bh, but dh not unfrequently, and 
occasionally even gh. On the other hand the Greeks have 
thoroughly weakened the spirants y,s,v, the Italians retained 
in the main the sounds, if not the symbols. From this it is 
obvious that the study of Comparative Philology can never 
supersede the necessity of thorough investigation of each par- 
ticular language for itself. Greek etymology can only be 
known by historical investigation of the Greek language itself. 

As a rule then, the weaker sound is later than the Apparent 
stronger. But to this rule there are undoubtedly some ^ 7ie win- 
exceptions. All such cases will however I believe be found c 'P le ' 



10 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

on examination to be less apparent examples of the general 
law — namely, that phonetic change arises from weakness of 
articulation. A soft letter sometimes changes to a hard from 
the influence of neighbouring sounds : for example, the g of 
FRAG — whence fragor, &c. is hardened to k in ft -actus. This 
of course takes place because it is much harder to articu- 
late a soft consonant and then a hard one immediately after- 
wards than it is to pronounce two hards together. The 
principle of assimilation has come in and reversed the com- 
mon rule of phonetic change ; but assimilation itself is an 
instance of the wider principle. Similarly hiemps would 
seem to be a stronger form than hiems: and certainly the 
p is merely phonetic and belongs neither to the base nor to 
the case-suffix s. But because it is very difficult to sound 
s immediately after the labial nasal m, in an indistinct less 
energetic pronunciation of the word, a weak p was heard, to 
bridge over the difficulty : and this made its way at last 
into the written word. But the new form though heavier 
is still easier to sound than the old one. Ease of pronun- 
ciation was the reason why frag-tus became fractus and 
hiems was increased to hiemps, just as much as it caused 
the weakening, e.g. of stlites into lites and esam into eram. 
Sometimes we find that the general endeavour for easier 
pronunciation takes the form of striving after greater dis- 
tinctness, and so has the effect of strengthening a weaker 
letter. Thus the Greeks unable to pronounce OtOvfio clearly 
changed the first aspirate into the stronger tenuis. But the 
change also is based on the fact that ridrj/jLi is an easier 
word to pronounce than OlOtj/jli,. Taken by itself t requires 
more effort to pronounce than : the check is more complete 
in pronouncing t than in pronouncing 6, where the h is due 
to a portion of the breath being allowed to escape before 
the t is fully sounded. But when 6 occurs at the begin- 
ning of two consecutive syllables, a greater effort is required 



I.] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. n 

to place the organs of speech twice in the necessary posi- 
tion for producing it. I shall endeavour to prove in a later 
lecture that 6 was pronounced not as our th, but as t with a 
distinct breathing after it : t'hit'hemi thus pronounced will 
be found very difficult. All these and other apparent excep- 
tions arising from assimilation and dissimilation of sounds, 
or from indistinct articulation, will be fully described in their 
proper places. 

A different cause has been assigned for certain variations Different 
of sound by Prof. Max Miiller in his valuable lectures on the M -^^- 4 
Science of Language : he supposes an originally indistinct sub J ect - 
sound, capable of passing into different forms in different 
languages or different dialects of the same language. In 
the fourth lecture of his second series, he gives several ex- 
amples of " phonetic degeneracy:" and he says (p. 176) that 
the principal cause of this is " when people attempt to eco- 
nomize their breath and muscular energy." But beside this 
cause of variation, and distinct from it, he mentions another, 
which he calls "Dialectic Growth" (p. 180). By this he 
accounts for the phonetic diversity which is seen e.g. in the 
Sanskrit gharma, Greek depixo-s, Latin formus — all undoubt- 
edly modifications of one Indo-European word meaning "hot." 
These forms, he thinks, point to "a previous state of lan- 
guage, in which, as in the Polynesian dialect, the two or 
three principal points of consonantal contact were not yet 
felt as definitely separated from each other." Thus in the 
instance given above, the three forms were received by the 
three languages from some earlier stage, in which the arti- 
culation of the original word was so vague that it might take 
any one of the forms mentioned. This is possible, nor is 
the theory confuted by the a priori objection made to it by 
Prof. Curtius (Gr. Et. p. 3G6 note), that such .indistinctness 
of sound is inconsistent with the strong articulation which 
peculiarly belongs to the oldest languages. But there seems 



12 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

to me more weight in his question, what the sound could 
have been which was capable of such strange variation. The 
numeral "five" is expressed by panchan in Sanskrit, irivre 
in common Greek, Trefiire in Aeolic, quinque in Latin, pomtis 
in Oscan, fimf in Gothic, penki in Lithuanian. What can 
the two consonantal sounds have originally been which could 
be strengthened or weakened in so many ways? Prof. 
Miiller speaks of " phonetic idiosyncrasies" in particular lan- 
guages : which seems to me only another title for weaknesses 
of articulation become hereditary by transmission from one 
generation to another. But he says (p. 184) that " these 
idiosyncrasies are quite inadequate to explain why the Latin 
coquo should in Greek appear as 7re7rr(o." Professor Curtius 
however thinks that the change from original k to p as in 
ireiTTco, or from k to t as in rt? (Sk. Jcis, Lat. quid) is to be 
explained by the involuntary springing up of parasitic sounds: 
thus that a u or v by relaxed articulation was sounded after 
the h — as it actually did spring up in the Latin, e.g. ting-u-o 
(Gr. riyyco) ; and we may hear similar cases of relaxed arti- 
culation in England, e.g. ne-a for nay, and ge-ate for gate in 
Cumberland: and fi-ound for found, &c. in Suffolk — then this 
labial v by degrees corrupted the k to the labial p, and then 
vanished. Similarly t might arise from k by the mediation 
of a parasitic y — thus, h, ky> ty, t : the change from k to t 
being caused by just the same indistinct articulation which 
in England causes us often to hear tloth, and not cloth, and 
dlory not glory : though Prof. Max Miiller finds it hard to 
believe it. These variations are of course not universal, only 
occasional ; it is only comparatively a small number of words 
in which the Attic has weakened a k, which the Doric has 
retained, to t or p : similarly the Doric has suffered change 
in some roots as well as the Attic : Feir (prig, vak) is " to 
speak" in Doric as well as in Attic. I think that the theory 
given above is sufficient to explain most of the cases : and 



I.J THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 13 

thus they are all instances of a weakening tendency, gra- 
dually affecting different dialects and languages, and resisted 
by them in proportion to the firmuess of their articulation ; 
affecting for example the Doric least, the Attic considerably, 
the Aeolic (compare nre^ire and nricrvpes with the Attic irevre 
and Teao-apes) most of all ; leaving the Latin untouched, but 
attacking the Oscan severely 1 . 

I have thus tried to shew that (in spite of apparent 
exceptions) all phonetic change has a downward tendency ; 
that it causes in general weakening of the language, even 
though that weakening may be usefully employed. What 
then was the original, of which the Greek and Latin are 
copies, weakened each in its own peculiar way? This will be 
the subject of the next Lecture. 

1 Dr Donaldson (New Cratylus, § 121) explained this difference of sound 
as having been produced by " the law of divergent articulations " from " the 
union of the original guttural and labial kg." I am obliged to reject this 
terrible combination of sounds, because I see no reason to believe that our 
forefathers possessed much more flexible muscles than we do. He says (ib. 
§ 110) that "the regular series of transitions, which such a combination of 
the guttural and labial would present, may easily be described: the guttural 
may be represented by k, q, g,j, s, h, the labial by p, b, v; and these sets of 
letters may be permuted with each other to any extent." Just before he 
says, " in those cases where a dental makes its appearance, it must be con- 
sidered as having arisen by a fault of articulation from the sibilant:" so that 
t and d must be added to the permutations of the guttural. This is indeed 
etymology made very easy ! 

It may perhaps be thought that in these lectures too little reference is 
made to the works of one of the most active and independent of English phi- 
lologists. As an old pupil, I should wish to do the fullest honour to the 
genius, learning, and untiring energy of Dr Donaldson : as such also I can- 
not but regret the failures in judgment (as they seem to me) which led him 
either to statements like those quoted above, which would degrade etymology 
to the mere juggling pastime that it is sometimes held to be, and render 
scientific treatment of it impossible — or to the wild and groundless ethno- 
logical theories which mar the Varronianus. If such theories were given as 
mere theories, no harm would be done; but they are put on the same footing 
with inductions as certain as those of any science can possibly be. It is this 
mixture of the proven and not-proven which must make Dr Donaldson's 
books unfit for students of comparative philology. 



14 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. 



NOTE TO LECTURE I. 

ON THE DERIVATION OF LATIN WORDS FROM GREEK. 

The facts are so very simple, yet there is so much misconception 
about them, that it seems worth while to say a word on the 
supposed derivation of Latin words from Greek. This theory is 
probably to be attributed to Niebuhr's hypothesis of a Greek and 
non-Greek element in the Latin language, which made its way 
into English works without much examination through the in- 
fluence of Niebuhr's extraordinary genius; but which has been 
completely overthrown by Comparative Philology. The apparently 
Greek element in the Latin language is (generally speaking) that 
part of the common inheritance of the Greeks and Italians, which 
each nation retained and developed after the separation of the two 
branches of the original stock. The apparently non- Greek element 
is that portion of the common inheritance which was neglected by 
the Greeks — or, if retained by provincial and obscure dialects was 
disused by those which possessed a literature; which therefore in 
process of time seemed to be — to some extent actually was — peculiar 
to the Italians. 

What then are we to say of words like lyra, &c. ? Are not 
these derived from the Greek 1 Certainly not derived. No Latin 
word is derived from the Greek in the proper sense of the term. 
The Latin borrowed words fully formed from the Greek, which it 
spelt on different principles according to the different times at 
which they became nationalised. At the earliest period at which 
such borrowed words occur, we find them spelt with such Latin 
characters as most nearly represented those Greek sounds which 
had either been developed by the Greek after the parting of the 
two peoples, or which had been lost by the Latins out of the 
original common stock. Thus the Greek aspirates — peculiar 
developments of the Greek — appeared in Latin as unaspirated 
mutes; e.g. Aeiles fA^iAAe-us), Burrus (TLvppos) ; this last word 
and Bruges (</>pvyes) shew that the full Latin u was taken as 



I] THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 15 

the nearest Latin exponent of the Greek upsilon (a modified u), 
and in Plautus ss appears as the best representative of the 
strong Greek £ (which differed from the old weak Italian z, see 
Corssen, die Lateinische Sprache, 1. 122), in badisso, tarpessita, &g. 
In the Augustan age, on the contrary, Greek characters are bor- 
rowed as well as the sounds, the Y in lyra, the Z in zona, &c. : 
while a combination of letters represented the complex sound of 
the Greek aspirates — chorda, philosopliia, &c. (An attempt will 
afterwards be made to shew that these aspirates were really aspi- 
rated letters in the Greek, not spirants, e.g. that <£ was pronounced 
p'h, not /.) Now it is obvious that these words were not derived 
from the Greek; they were not formed from a Greek root by adding 
to it a Latin sufhx ; they were derived in Greece by Greek suffixes 
and transplanted when fully grown into Latin. They are as foreign 
to the Latin language and its development, as the men and things 
they represent were foreign to Rome. But from these borrowed 
Greek words it was inferred by a false analogy that numbers of genu- 
ine Latin words were borrowed from the Greek. Because lyra was 
the Greek Xvpa, it was supposed that lacruma was the Greek BaKpv- 
fxa; and consequently it was written lacryma,or even by some curious 
fatality lachryma. But in truth the words have nothing in common 
except their root DAKR ; each was formed from that root, but by 
its own suffix in its own land: the emotional Italian was not 
likely to lack a word for a tear, till he had borrowed it from the 
Greek ! In other cases — e. g. the Latin silua, no doubt the noun 
SVLVA existed in Greco-Italian days, and was then modified by 
the two peoples in different ways according to their different pho- 
netic laws. But it is an entire mistake to write silua with a y, that 
is, to imply that the word was borrowed from the Greek vhrj. The 
Latin has indeed kept the old form more nearly than the Greek ; 
it has changed u to i, and a to a, both regular Latin changes, and 
both weakenings ; but vXrj exhibits no less than four weakenings; 
8 has passed into the rough breathing ; u has (as always in Greek) 
been weakened to upsilon; v has passed out altogether, and d has 
been thinned to rj. Silua is the stronger word of the two and can 
no more be derived or even borrowed from vXrj than sus, mentioned 
in the text, from vs. 

The rule then to follow in writing Latin is very simple : we 
must use the letters Y, Z, and the compounds CH, TH, PH, in 



\6 THE PRINCIPLE OF PHONETIC CHANGE. [Lect. I. 

words borrowed from the Greek and in no others. Such words 
are not difficult to recognise. They are mostly words relating to 
the arts and sciences which the Romans borrowed from the Greeks. 
All other words are, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, genuine 
Latin, and should be written in the Latin character. The only 
exception which should be allowed is in cases where we have ex- 
press testimony that Roman writers in the last century of the 
Republic employed Greek characters — or the equivalent compounds 
in Latin — in words which are beyond doubt genuinely Latin, but 
which by a mistaken analogy were then supposed to be derived 
from the Greek. In such cases we may write, e. g. pulcher 1 — 
though we believe it to be etymologically wrong — on the same 
principle that we write, e.g. caussa, and querella ; because they 
represent the spelling which, rightly or wrongly, was in use in 
Cicero's day. Lucretius truly says, "Utilitas expressit nomina 
rerum" ; and it is equally true that use must always be the 
standard of orthography, and must override etymological con- 
siderations. Only let our standard in Latin be the usage of Cicero's 
time, not of the period of the Renaissance. 

1 See Cic. Orat. c. 48. § 160. 



LECTURE II. 



RELATIONSHIP OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 



In my last lecture I endeavoured to explain to you what Our start- 

• t trig -point, 

I meant by " phonetic change : to shew you that it sprang the Indo- 
from the desire to economise labour, and that its result was language. 
generally to weaken an older form of a word. In order 
then to do what I have proposed to myself in these lectures 
— to describe those phonetic changes which are peculiar to 
the Greek and Latin languages — it will be necessary to go 
some way back. It will be necessary for you to know some- 
thing of that language from which they deviated. I shall 
not assume any acquaintance on your part with other forms 
of speech which have in like manner varied from the 
original speech of our forefathers — with Sanskrit, with 
Gothic, or with Lithuanian — and I shall refer as little as 
possible to these languages, and only when by so doing I 
can better illustrate some law of change. I presume that 
P. i. 2 



1 8 RELATIONSHIP OF THE [Lect. 

you are acquainted with the general discoveries of Com- 
parative Philology. I presume that you are familiar with 
the fact that all the civilized nations of Europe, and two at 
least of those of Asia, can be indisputably proved to be the 
descendants of one common stock : that there was a time 
when the forefathers of the German and of the Sclav e — 
of the Greek, the Italian, and the Celt — of the Hindu and 
the Persian — wandered over the same pasture grounds and 
spoke in the same tongue. So much is now, I suppose, 
familiar to all of you ; but at the risk of telling you again 
what you already know, I shall give you here the very brief 
and clear account of the main divisions and subdivisions of the 
variously called Indo-European, Indo-Germanic or Aryan 
people, as given in that most valuable work, Schleicher's 
Compendium der Vergleichenden Grammatik. 

" The name of Indo-Germanic has been given to a certain 
Indo- 6 c ^ ass °f the- languages of the Asiatic-European portion of 

European ^q earth, which are so accordant with each other, and which 
people. 

differ so much from all other languages in their nature, that 

they clearly show themselves to have sprung from a common 
original language. Within this Indo-Germanic family of 
languages, some which are more closely geographically con- 
nected, shew themselves certainly to be the most nearly 
allied, so that the Indo-Germanic family divides into three 
groups or divisions. These are — 

I. The Aryan 1 division, consisting of the Indian and 
Iranian, or more correctly Uranian, families of languages, 
which are very closely related to each other. 

The oldest representative and original language of the 
Indian family, and the oldest known language of the Indo- 
Germanic tongue altogether, is the old Indian, the language 

1 It will be seen that the term Aryan is here applied only to the two 
Asiatic peoples, who can be certainly proved to have called themselves by 
that name. 



II.] INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 19 

of the oldest portion of the Vedas; at a later time in a 
simpler form and as a grammatical literary language, con- 
trasted with the popular dialects, named Sanskrit. 

We do not know Eranian in its original form ; the oldest 
Eranian languages which have reached us are the Old- 
Bactrian or Zend (the eastern), and the old Persian, the 
language of the Achaemenidean cuneiform inscriptions (the 
western). To this family belongs also the Armenian, which 
we first know at a later time, and which must have separated 
earlier from the Eranian original language. 

II. The south-western European portion consisting of 
(1) the Greek, nearest to which stands a language only known 
in its modern form, the Albanian: (2) the Italian; the 
oldest known forms of this family are the Latin, — and espe- 
cially important for us is the old Latin, as it was spoken 
before the introduction of the educated literary language 
moulded by Greek influence, — the Umbrian, and the Oscan: 
(3) the Keltic: the best preserved, but still very decom- 
posed, language of the Keltic family is the Old Irish, reach- 
ing from the 7th century of our era 1 ." 

Italian and Keltic resemble each other more than they 
do Greek, on which ground it has been generally assumed by 
philologists that there is also a closer family relation between 
them than between any other two Indo-European peoples. 
Other writers, however, relying rather on the geographical 
position of the Kelts when they first became known to us in 
history, on the fact that they occupy the extreme west, into 
which they may be presumed to have been driven by the suc- 
cessive wars which have swept over Europe, prefer rather to 
call the Greek and Italian peoples " brothers," while they 
call the Italians only "cousins" of the Kelts. This view is 

1 Com p. pp. 5, 6. 

2—2 



20 RELATIONSHIP OF THE [Lect. 

held by the latest historians of both Rome and Greece — by 
Mommsen and Prof. E. Curtius. 

III. " The northern European portion, consisting of the 
Sclavonic family, with the closely allied Lithuanian (which is 
for us the important language among this group), and the 
Teutonic, which is widely sundered from both. 

The oldest forms of language in this portion are the Old 
Bulgarian — old Ecclesiastical Sclavonic in MS., dating up 
to the 11th century: the Lithuanian — first brought under 
our notice three hundred years ago, but clearly of much 
higher antiquity — and the Gothic, of the fourth century. Near 
to the Gothic, however, are the most ancient repre- 
sentatives of the German and the Norse, the Old High- 
German and Old Norse, to be brought forward where they 
present older forms than the Gothic. 

It is in the Asiatic division that is contained most that 
is ancient in the sounds and in the fabric of language, and 
here again especially in the Old Indian. Then follows with 
reference to antiquity — that is to say, in the retaining its 
similarity to the original language, in having fewer strongly 
developed individual forms — the Southern European division, 
in which the Greek had remained closest to the original ; 
finally, the Northern European group, which, taken as a 
whole, presents itself as developed with the most indi- 
viduality, and in which the least remains of the original 
speech are to be traced. 
Their de- If we combine this statement with the relationship 

delation- a ^ rea dy described of the Indo-Germanic languages among 
shi P- themselves, and draw from the two our conclusion as to the 

process of the divisions of the main body of Indo-Germanic 
speech in the earliest times, we arrive at the folio wing- 
results : The Indo-Germanic original speech divided itself 
first, by the unequal development in different parts of its 



II] IXDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 21 

province, into two sections : it divided off from itself the 
Sclavo- Teutonic, the language which afterwards divided into 
Teutonic and Sclavo-Lithuanian : and later that portion of 
the original speech which remained, the Aryo-Grceco-Italo- 
Keltic, divided itself into, Graeco-Italo-Keltic and Aryan, of 
which the first named soon divided itself into Greek and 
Italo-Keltic : and the latter, the Aryan, remained undivided 
for a considerable time. 

At a later period the Sclavo-Lithuanian, the Aryan 
(Indo-Eranian), and Italo-Keltic further divided themselves. 
It is possible that at some or all of the divisions more lan- 
guages arose than are now manifest, as in many instances in 
process of time Indo-Germanic languages have probably 
become extinct, The more towards the East an Indo-Ger- 
manic people lives, so much more of what is ancient has 
their language retained. The more towards the west they 
have gone, so much the less of what is old, and so many 
more new formations are to be found in their language. 
From these and other intimations we may conclude that the 
Sclavo-Teutonic race first began their journey ings towards 
the west : then followed the Graeco-Italo-Keltic : of the 
Aryans who remained behind the Indians travelled south- 
eastward, and the Eranians spread in a south-westerly direc- 
tion. The home of the original Indo-Germanic race is to 
be sought in the central high lands of Asia. 

It is only of the Indians, who were the last to separate 
from the parent stem, that we can say with any certainty 
that they drove out an aboriginal people from their later 
dwelling-place, much of whose language passed into their 
own ; of many of the other Indo-Germanic peoples such an 
hypothesis is highly probable 1 ." 

Prof. Schleicher proceeds to show the degrees of relation- 
ship of the main families of the Indo-Germanic speech by 

1 Com p. pp. 0— ft. 



22 



RELATIONSHIP OF THE 



[Lect. 



the diagram given below ; in which the length of the lines 
indicates the probable time of separation. 




Original Lan 



Aryan 



Is this To this primitive people I prefer to give the now rather 

° r lTle\ro- superseded title Indo-European. I prefer it to the name 
perly called A rv an, now rendered popular by Prof. Max Miiller's most 
suggestive lectures, because I think that there is no sufficient 
evidence that that name was ever adopted by any other 
than the Asiatic branch of the family. The tracing by Prof. 
M. Miiller (Lectures, Series I. p. 236) of " the ancient name 
of Arya from India to Ireland" seems, to say the least, 
very uncertain : and the connection of the word drya with 
the root found in arare 1 , is unlikely. Surely the sim- 
plest way is to connect it with the widely extended root 
AE, "to fit:" whence the derivative might get the succes- 
sive meanings of " fitting," " worthy," " noble ;" a sequence 
of meaning very similar to that of the Sanskrit sat, origi- 
nally (a)sa(n)t, the present participle of AS "to be," which 
signifies first " being," then " actually existing," " true," 



1 Id. p. 226. 



II.] INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 23 

"good." Why should not the eastern family of the Indo- 
European race — the ancestors of the Hindus and of the 
Persians — have called themselves " the noble" in opposition 
to the indigenous tribes whom they subjugated? just as the 
old Greek nobles called themselves the eaOXoi and dyaOol, 
and the Roman conservatives styled themselves the "boni?" 
The evidence of names like Ariovistus, and the very dubious 
Erin and Ireland, is too slight to warrant us in supposing 
that the use of the term drya in its derived sense is older 
than the time when the Hindus and Persians remained 
together as one people after the separation of the Eastern 
and Western branches. 

The readiness with which the name Aryan has been importance 
accepted as the designation of the entire family, might S^Tm/- 
almost seem to be a trace of the erroneous belief till late neouslyto 

Sanskrit. 

almost universal — a belief of course not shared by Prof. 
Max Muller — that Sanskrit is somehow an older language 
than its sisters : and by consequence that every form found 
in Sanskrit must represent the primitive form more nearly 
than any other, if indeed it be not the primitive form itself. 
This error was indeed a natural one : it arose from the un- 
doubted fact that our records of Sanskrit speech stretch 
back to a much earlier time than those of any of the sister 
languages. Still very little consideration will show that it 
does not necessarily follow from this that Sanskrit must in 
every case present to us the oldest form of verb or noun, of 
derivative or inflective suffix. As a matter of fact, there is 
hardly any language — not even the most corrupted of modern 
tongues — which does not occasionally shew us a more antique 
form than the Sanskrit. Thus the Greek d-arep- (where 
the a is euphonic), the Latin stella (for ster-ula) ; the Gothic 
stair -nd, German stern, and Dutch ster, can leave no doubt 
on our mind that our own "star" represents more faith- 
fully the name by which our fathers knew the nightly 



24 RELATIONSHIP OF THE [Lect. 

fires which shone in all their wondrous splendour above the 
unbroken horizon which bounds the highlands of central 
Asia, than the corrupted Sanskrit tdra, where the s has 
been lost by relaxed articulation : whilst the identity of the 
Sanskrit word with the more perfect form preserved by the 
sister languages is evidenced by the Vedic staras. In fact 
Sanskrit, eminently conservative as it was of derivative and 
inflectional forms, can shew at least as large a list of weak- 
enings of particular letters or groups of letters, as any 
Western language. The primitive form in every case is to 
be discovered only by tracing the word up through all the 
main divisions of the original speech in which it occurs. 
To do this requires care, acuteness, and knowledge of the 
special phonetic laws of each language. Neither similarity 
of sound, nor identity of meaning, alone is sufficient to 
prove the identity of similar words in different languages. 
Nay there are cases where identity of sound is an almost 
certain proof that the words must be of different origin ; 
had they sprung from the same word they must in obedi- 
ence to ascertained phonetic laws have taken different forms 
in different languages. Thus no one doubts that the English 
"kin" (Goth Jcuni) is the same word as the Greek 761/09. But 
if our English word had begun with g and not with k, we 
should have known the two words though identical in sound 
must have been of different origin : because in accordance with 
an ascertained sequence of sound — well known by the name 
of Grimm's law — k, and not g, is the letter which in Gothic 
corresponds to 7 in the same Greek word. Correspondence then 
of sound, according to known rules — not necessarily identity — 
must be insisted upon as necessary for certainty in etymo- 
logy, as well as identity of meaning. In obedience to this 
canon we must reject many etymologies which might other- 
wise seem most certain. Thus probably few would hesitate 
to identify at first sight the Roman deus with the Greek 



II.] INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 25 

#ec?. But in words derived by the two languages from a 
common source, an initial d in Latin has regularly 8 corre- 
sponding to it in the Greek ; as domus, $6{jlos, &c. There- 
fore whilst deus must be referred together with the Sanskrit 
deva to an Indo-Eur. root DIY "to shine;" some other 
origin must be sought for #eo? ; perhaps 6ES a secondary 
form of @E the root of tlOtj/jli; though this is rejected by 
Prof. Curtius (Gr. Et. p. 230 and 454?. 2 ed.) in favour of a 
distinct root ©ES "to pray," corresponding, as he thinks 
to a Latin FES in fes-tus &c; from which would be derived 
the curious word Oeaaavro in Pindar (Nem. v. 10). But, be 
the derivation of 6eos what it may, the severance of it from 
deus is a fair example of the rigorous observance of pho- 
netic laws which the science of Comparative Philology de- 
mands when properly pursued. 

But we must return to our immediate object. We do Our object, 
not now want by comparison of different languages to dis- somet Ung 
cover the original forms of the words we find there in their °/ the let ~ 

ters, roots, 

endless modifications. We want to know what those and tcords 
phonetic laws are which have modified the development of original 
Greek and Latin. We must therefore assume the main speec ' 
results of Comparative Philology. We must accept the 
forms discovered by manifold comparison ; and then see how 
the Greek and Latin forms have varied from them. To do 
this fully, we ought to know the exact stage of development 
at which this early speech had arrived before the time when 
those who spoke it were broken up into those great divisions 
which have determined the history of the world. We ought 
to see what was their store of letters, their stock of roots, 
their wealth of grammatical inflexion, their capacity for ex- 
tending their vocabulary by composition and by derivation. 
Then we may be able to form some estimate of the force of 
character and circumstance by which were developed the 
two languages of which we are speaking; the one un- 



root"? 



26 RELATIONSHIP OF THE [Lect. 

doubtedly the most rich and flexible, the other perhaps the 
most tenacious and unyielding of the entire family. I shall 
endeavour in my next lecture to set before you the Indo- 
European alphabet, as exhibited in certain roots and words 
common to nearly all Indo-European peoples, which will 
incidentally throw some light upon their formative system. 
What is a Perhaps, however, before we proceed further, it may be 

well to say a few words in order to obviate a possible mis- 
take. We have had and shall often have to speak of "roots." 
Now it is very important to know clearly what we mean by 
this word, if we wish to keep our ideas clear. I think that 
it is often supposed when we say, for example, that da is a 
root meaning to give, or i a root meaning to go ; that in 
arriving at these roots we have arrived at some ultimate 
facts from which to start back and explain the whole con- 
stitution of language ; that in fact it is a law of nature that 
da must mean to give, i must mean to go. Now in the first 
place we must carefully remember that it is only for the 
Indo-European family that da means to give. It is not so 
for the whole human race. So if there were some inherent 
necessity that da should mean "to give," that necessity 
would exist only for one family of mankind — confessedly 
the most important family — but still only one out of the 
human race. If indeed this fact were universally true, all 
our philological inquiries would have been but steps in the 
inquiry into the origin of language as a whole. But it is 
quite possible to examine the relation of a Greek word to 
other Greek words, or to cognate words in Sanskrit and 
Gothic and Latin, without being involved in the question 
whether the so-called Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh theories are 
true or not. That all language did originally spring from 
mutational and interjectional sounds combined — not from 
one or the other separately as has been implied sometimes — 
I for one firmly believe, not seeing any other possible origin 



II.] INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 27 

for language. But the furthest and earliest time to which the 
history of the Indo-European language can be traced does not 
come any way near to that really primeval time. The highly- 
developed vowel system of the Indo-European language, its 
power of expressing modifications of idea by change of 
vowels, and the extent to which this method has superseded 
the older and simpler method of reduplication ; the general 
lightness and flexibility of its roots ; its inflectional system 
already suffering from decay: these and many other facts 
may give some idea of the lapse of time which must have 
separated the earliest historically traceable stage of the 
language of Europe, from those first beginnings of all speech. 
And the more clearly we understand this, the less shall we Connection 
be inclined to admit any necessary connection of sound and ^^nd 
sense even in the Indo-European roots. What probability ideas - 
is there that any analysis can give us the ultimate form of 
those roots? Is it not on the other hand certain that in all 
that vast prehistoric time they must have been undergoing 
changes analogous to those we find during those ages in 
which we can trace their development ? If, then, we cannot 
know with certainty their ultimate form, of what scientific 
use can speculations be upon the connection between them 
and the ideas they express? That there was some connec- 
tion originally I believe; but I do not believe that it is ever 
discoverable with certainty : and that it was ever necessary, 
I deny. Mr Farrar (Chapters on Language, c. 18, p. 202) 
mentions the frequent occurrence of the combination st to 
express stability. Undoubtedly the root sta and extensions 
of it — stav, star, stambh, &c. — are found in all the Indo- 
European languages. He proceeds : " There must have been 
some reason for this ; and we believe it to be furnished by 
the simple instinctive Lautgeberde — st! a sound peculiarly 
well adapted to demand attention (compare whist! usht, &c), 
and therefore well adapted to express stopping and standing 



28 RELATIONSHIP OF THE [Lect. 

as the immediate results of an awakened attention." Very 
possible: but how is it to be proved? How do we know that 
sta is the ultimate form of the root ? It would be quite in 
analogy with the development of other roots (e.g., gan, 
gna) that a more original form was sat: in which case the 
explanation does not seem so probable. It is essentially 
a guess and incapable of verification. On this question of 
the connection between idea and form, I adopt unhesitatingly 
Renan's view (Or. du Lang. p. 148), "La liaison du sens 
et du mot n'est jamais necessaire, jamais arbitraire, toujours 
elle est motivee." The force of the latter part of this 
maxim will, I hope, appear more fully in the course of 
these lectures. 

What then do I hold about roots? I accept Prof. Curtius' 
definition, although I do not agree with all his views re- 
specting them : "A root (Or. Et, p. 43, 2nd ed.) is that com- 
bination of sounds which remain^ when a word is stripped of 
everything formative." Further on, he excludes such com- 
binations as have suffered from chance, sporadic, variation. 
For example, take the word ylyvoybai. Here strip off the 
reduplication yc, the termination /jlcu, and the connecting 
vowel o, we have left yv, an unpronounceable result. But 
the true Greek root yev is preserved for us in yevos, &c, the 
e having been lost in the verb in the striving for lightness 
of sound, a tendency which we shall see has had so wide 
effect on language as to be entitled to the name of a law. 
A root then to me is simply an abstraction 1 , a convenient 
heading under which to class different words belonging to 
the same family, a help when we wish to investigate their 
affinities to each other, or their relation to words of another 
family, or again of another language. For these are the 
only proper objects of Comparative Philology, at least in its 
present stage : and they are quite enough to occupy philolo- 
1 See however M. Midler, n. 84, &c. 



II] IFDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLES. 29 

gists for many years to come, instead of investigating pro- 
blems for the solution of which there are not yet — perhaps 
never will be — sufficient data. From this point of view we 
can speak of a Greek, or a Sanskrit, root as well as of an Each Ian- 
Indo-European root — not implying that it is the simplest f^ a <?wn "* 
form traceable, but the simplest in that language. Thus roots - 
I spoke above of the " Greek root yev" and this is the oldest 
distinctive Greek form. But e is never an original vowel of 
any root in any Indo-European language, and comparison 
with the Sanskrit jan, with a knowledge of the phonetic 
changes found in each language, leads us to the original 
Indo-European gan, the oldest traceable form. Still for 
Greek philology it is convenient and permissible to speak of 
the root yev. I confess that I do not like the metaphor ; it 
seems to me to imply too much, almost some power of 
growth inherent in the " root." But the term has become so 
established that it is hopeless to think of changing it ; and 
no harm can be done so long as we know clearly what we 
mean when we use it — that we are only employing a label 
(as it were) to distinguish a number of phenomena; not 
thereby giving any explanation of them 1 . 

This application of the term root to the ultimate forms 
of particular languages may also be justified for the sake of 
clearness ; since, if we refer all Greek roots back to their 
presumably original Indo-European form, we shall confuse, 
as Professor Curtius has pointed out, roots the most dis- 
similar. Thus there is a Greek root TAP, "to call," found 
in yypvs', another FPE, "to awaken;" and another TEP, 
" to be old," in yepcov. All these Greek roots may be traced 
hack to the simpler form GAR, which is attested both by the 
laws of phonetic change, to be hereafter stated, and by the 
occurrence of derivates in all these senses in the sister 
languages: thus GAR appears in the sense of "chattering" 
1 Cf. Farrar, Chapters on "Language, p. 97. 



30 RELATIONSHIP, &c. [Lect. II. 

in garrire, where custom and use have given the word a 
slightly different sense from that of yrjpveiv; the same form 
must underlie the anomalous Sanskrit root jdgri, " to wake," 
which is only gar irregularly reduplicated and then weakened ; 
thirdly, it appears in the Sanskrit jaras, " old age," with 
only the weakening of g to j common in Sanskrit. If there- 
fore we wish to trace the words belonging to these three 
classes back in every case to the presumably earliest form, 
we should be justified in saying that the simplest traceable 
form in each case is GAR. But what do we gain by this ? 
It is much better for Greek philology to retain the three 
distinct forms, than to speak of three distinct roots by one 
form. Indeed it is to my mind most probable that at a 
still earlier but prehistoric period, all three roots w T ere distinct 
in form; and that each afterwards passed into the form 
GAR by regular processes of mechanical change. 



LECTURE III. 



THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 



It may be regarded as certainly ascertained that at a time The origi- 
not long before the first great separation of the Indo-European ^ a p 
family, their alphabet contained at least fifteen consonants, 
and three vowels. The consonants are best arranged thus : 
nine momentary, and six protracted sounds — the Dauerlaute 
of German etymologists. These two classes are called by 
Prof. Curtius Explosiv- and Fricativ-laute respectively. The 
nine momentary sounds contain 3 hards — K, T, P ; 3 softs — 
G, D, B; and three aspirates— GH, DH, BH. The pro- 
tracted sounds comprise the nasals, N and M ; the three 
spirants Y, S, V, and the liquid R. There seems not to be 
sufficient ground for attributing to this primitive alphabet 
the guttural nasal, which is denoted by a special symbol in 
Sanskrit, and which is represented by 7 in ayyekos, and by 
n in angustus: though it may be that the sound existed 
with no special symbol ; in that case the language possessed 
a nasal for each of the classes of momentary sound, guttu- 
ral, dental, and labial. It is also doubtful whether R had 
not begun to pass into L before the breaking up of the Indo- 
European people, as it certainly did pass in the derived Ian- 



32 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

guages : if so, it should also be added to the early alphabet. 
It is likewise maintained by able writers that our forefathers 
possessed the hard aspirates KH, TH, and PH, as well as 
the soft ones. These hard aspirates are found in the Asiatic 
languages ; and in all the Greek dialects in the forms ^, 6, </> : 
the Greek, as also the Latin, has lost the soft aspirates. It 
has been argued that these hard aspirates being found both 
in Greek, Sanskrit, and Zend, must be regarded as part of 
the common inheritance of our common ancestors, which 
were afterwards suffered to fall into disuse by the other 
members of the family. But on the other hand, there are 
many indications in Sanskrit that the hard aspirates were 
only developed by the Hindus after their isolation from their 
European brethren, and this fact, coupled with their absence 
from the Latin and the Teutonic and Sclavonic peoples, 
makes it more probable that the aspirates were separately 
produced by the Greeks, and by the Hindus and Persians, at 
times subsequent to the great separation. This question will 
be touched upon again in the next lecture. 

In vowels, we find the three simple sounds, A, I, U. Of 
these I and U have by their side the cognate consonants Y 
and V, into which they often pass. A, on the contrary, 
can pass into no consonant : it is the vowel kclt i^o^rjv. 
Schleicher says that u a in the original Indo-Germanic 
speech is by far the commonest vowel : it occurs much 
oftener than both i and u together 1 /' 
Extension But our forefathers would seem to have possessed more 

than these three simple sounds. In order to express greater 
intensity of idea — or in order to denote some other modifica- 
tion of the idea — they had learnt to vary the simple a, i, u by 
an addition of vowel sound. By simply allowing a stronger 
current of air to pass from the lungs before sounding the 
radical vowel of a word, they produced in effect a new vowel 

1 Corrvp. p. 12. 



of the 
vowc 






III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 33 

a before each such vowel ; a being, as I have said above, of 
all vowels the simplest, and the least modified by the differ- 
ent organs of speech. Thus instead of original a they had 
a + a, or a: instead of i, a + i or ai : instead of m, a + u 
or an. Repeating the process they had a + a = a again ; 
a + ai = ai; a + au = an. They had thus a double modifica- 
tion of each vowel on an ascending scale — 

a, a + a — a, a + a = a, 
i, a + i — ai, a + ai = ai, 
u, a + u = ate, a-\- au = au \ 

It is quite true that these graduated vowel- scales are not 
found in any one Indo-European language in the exact forms 
here given. But this principle of vowel-modification is so 
certainly traceable in so many of the derived languages, that 
we may with absolute certainty refer it back to their com- 
mon parent : and the special phonetic laws of the several 
languages prove with equal certainty that the different forms 
in which these scales are found can be referred to the forms 
given above as the common original of all, and to no 
others. Some few of these different forms will be men- 
tioned in the Lecture upon Vowel-Intensification. 

It might have been expected that just as a was intensi- This in- 
fied into a, so also i and u should have been raised to I and sound was 
ii, as their regular method of increase. Indeed instances JSoSS 
might be brought forward from the Greek of this lengthen- tative. 
ing, e. g. Tplftw from rplfi, \vct from \v : lengthenings appa- 
rently of the same kind in the Latin are not really in point, 
e. g. fldo from fid, duco from due, for these are weakenings 
from feido and douco respectively, as is proved by inscrip- 
tions ; but there seems no ground for denying that the 
Greek modifications like those mentioned above are genuine 
examples of vowel-intensification. But the method is not 

1 Schleicher, Comp. p. 11. 

p. l. :\ 



34 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

sufficiently universal in the derived languages to prove that 
it was in use in the parent speech. Schleicher 1 indeed 
argues that l and u were unknown to the Indo-Europeans : 
and strange though this seems, it would certainly be difficult 
to prove their occurrence by such strict proof as sound phi- 
lology requires. The strongest argument in their favour is 
perhaps their constant occurrence in Sanskrit roots : but 
even these, as Schleicher points out, are mostly lengthened 
forms of simpler roots and peculiar developments of Sans- 
krit, the simpler form being in many cases found in the 
cognate language, e.g. "to be" is in Sanskrit BHU, but in 
Greek <3>T, Latin FU, so that it cannot be doubted that 
BHU was the primitive form. At all events, even if this ever 
were the regular method of intensification in Indo-European 
speech, it was superseded before the earliest sundering of 
the languages by the more refined method of qualitative — 
not merely quantitative — increase. Such a thorough loss of 
a simple early linguistic process, and such a complete estab- 
lishment of a later and more subtle one, seems to me 
one proof amongst many of the distance at which Indo- 
European speech as traceable in its earliest form lies from 
the primitive speech of the human race, and of the con- 
sequent uncertainty of all speculations which treat roots as 
absolutely ultimate forms, and then seek to explain them on 
physiological grounds. 

The advantage of qualitative over quantitative intensi- 
fication is obvious : two distinct steps in each scale in which 
it is possible are gained instead of one. This is of course 
impossible in the A scale, if both the first and second 
stages are denoted by a. These stages however are found 
distinct in Greek and Gothic, thanks to substitutions to be 
hereafter noticed ; not so in Sanskrit. Here then the Sans- 

1 Beitrage zur Vergleichenden Sprachforschung, edited by Kuhn and 
Schleicher, i. 331. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 35 

krit would seem as it commonly does to represent the sim- 
plest stage of vocalism : whilst the Greek and Gothic, as we 
believe, by their richer vowel-system succeeded in distin- 
guishing what was at first undistinguishable. 

The consonants had no such power of development as Consonant- 
the vowels. Where they changed, they changed not for the ^s'rmu- 
better, but for the worse. But generally speaking the con- larl }i P h °- 

TtCtlCy 710Z 

sonants of the Indo-European roots and even of the forma- dynamic. 
tive system remained unchanged, except in so far as they 
were modified by the tolerably regular and definite operation 
of the special phonetic laws of the different languages. Con- 
sonants indeed are the frame-work of language ; the stage 
(if the metaphor may be allowed) varying little from land 
to land with varying circumstances and traditions. But the 
difference of the plays exhibited on that stage measures the 
difference in the depth, the acuteness, the subtlety of the 
intellect of the nations. Such play in language is given to 
the vowels. 

Schleicher has well expressed the consequent difference 
in the use of vowels and consonants. "The vowels," he 
says 1 , "by their power of development can in addition to the 
expression of meaning express relation as well : the conso- 
nants are nothing but elements in the expression of mean- 
ing." Thus by vowel-change the Greek root III® can be 
raised to the forms ireid and iroiQ : three different stages of 
action can be expressed by these three forms, as we shall 
hereafter see : in all these the radical meaning is preserved 
by the consonants, the relativity is brought out by the vary- 
ing vowel. The same root appears in Latin in the form 
FID; here also we have the three stages, fides, feidus 
(afterwards spelt fidus), and foidus (afterwards foedus), 
although the meaning which we believe the change once had 

1 Camp. p. 162. 

3—2 



36 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

has perished in the general disorganisation of the Latin 
vowel-system. 

I now proceed to give examples of the Indo-European 
consonants occurring in primitive roots and words, which 
have been deduced from the various forms in which they 
are found in the different languages according to their special 
phonetic laws. It will be seen at once that in some lan- 
guages (especially in the Sanskrit) some of the consonants 
have been so much corrupted that the identification of 
e. g. a common Greek and Sanskrit root, may not be obvious 
without some knowledge of the phonetic laws of Sanskrit, 
which would account for the variation. This difficulty is 
unavoidable and cannot be met here, because it does not 
come under my plan to give in detail the phonetic laws of 
any language except of the Greek and of the Latin : and 
therefore it might be more consistent to proceed at once, 
after having merely enumerated the letters of the original 
alphabet, to the several Greek and Latin variations from 
them. But I think that this survey may be useful, and (I 
hope) interesting, on different grounds. I want you to have 
a firmer conviction of the existence of an actually spoken 
Indo-European language than you are likely to have ac- 
quired from merely hearing their alphabet. Also it may be 
a guide in general etymology to know under what forms it 
is possible for words familiar to you in Greek and Latin to 
appear in some others of the more important languages of 
the world: by having a rough list of the consonantal va- 
riations of those languages you may be kept at least from 
identifying words which can have no possible connection ; if 
you cannot attain to the first part of Lucretius' end of know- 
ledge — "quid possit oriri," you may at least see "quid ne- 
queat." Man will always etymologise ; but whether he does 
so to purpose or not, depends on his knowledge of the ascer- 
tained laws of the science. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 37 

I shall give the regular substitutes for each letter in each 
of the main languages of the family. The irregular merely 
sporadic variations of the Greek and Latin will come under 
our notice afterwards: those of the other nations do not 
concern us. The great majority of the examples are bor- Examples 
rowed from the carefully selected list of parallel words in the European 
second book of the Griechische Etymologie, which are given a ^P 1l< ^ eL 
there in their relation to the Greek. I begin with the hard mentary 
momentary sounds. 



K. 

(Ind.-Eur. K = Sk. k, kh, ch, c = Gk. k — Lat. c, g. = Goth. 1. Hard 
h,g = 0. H. G. h, g = Lith. k, sz.) ToZTs^^ 

Thus the Ind.-Eur. root AK, expressing " sharpness," must 
be assumed as the root form of the Greek d/c-ovr, clk-wk-t} and 
afcpo% of the Lat. ac-us, acu-o, and ac-ies; the natural tran- 
sition to the idea of quickness is found in Sk. ag-u, Gk. wk-v, 
Lat. oci-us. The root has been prolific in Greek and Latin, 
but nearly barren in the North-European branch. Yet Prof. 
Curtius (G. E. p. 123) seems to be right in combining the 
0. H. G. hamar — our " hammer" — with the Lith. ak-men, 
and the Sk. ag-man ; each of which means a "stone," and 
the latter also a "thunderbolt ;" and with the strange Greek 
a/c-fiov, which commonly means an "anvil," but which in 
Hesiod, Theog. 722, where he speaks of the ^aA/ceo? clk^wv 
ovpavodev /caricov, can mean nothing but the " thunderbolt." 
If all these words, as is probable, though Prof. Curtius with 
characteristic caution declines to affirm it, are to be referred 
to the root AK, we see in the "hammer" and the "anvil" 
the development of the further idea of " hardness," whilst 
the earlier idea of " swiftness," hard entirely to be dislodged, 
lingered in Greek if but in the thunderbolt of Hesiod. 

The direct antithet of AK is KI, the root of "quietness;" 



38 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

the ground form of Sk. CI "to lie", of KEI in Greek, where 
the simplest form does not occur, but the first step in vowel- 
intensification is to be seen in k&ixcli — not therefore a perfect 
in form any more than in sense, but a present form intensi- 
fied in a rare though perfectly natural manner — in kolttj 
"a bed," and probably in Kvfirj 1 , in which case the v would 
be a weakening of the radical vowel i, more frequently found 
in iEolic than in the other dialects ; and if this derivation 
be true, it will be difficult to exclude KcofMrj and tcw/ios from 
the same family. The certain Latin form is QUI, whence 
quies — but Prof. Curtius would derive also civis from the 
simpler root-form QL Givitas did not necessarily imply to a 
Roman residence in any owe large town: and the antiquity 
of the use of this root to denote settled abodes — but not so 
much towns as villages — is shewn further by the Gothic 
Jiaims — " haimos jah baurghs" {irvp^ot, Burghs) is used in 
Mark i. 38 to answer to the Greek /cwfioTrokeis — the German 
heim, our home and ham as a termination : and in Lithua- 
nian also Jcema-s is a village. It would of course be an entire 
mistake to conclude that "home" and its cognate words 
in the northern languages ever meant the " quiet peaceful 
place," natural as the association may seem. Only the Latin 
race seems to have developed the secondary meaning " rest," 
"peace," from a root which, like all others, had originally 
only a physical force — "to lie," and our "home" is (etymolo- 
gically) nothing but the place where our forefathers settled 
or " laid them down." This obvious and important rule, 
that the derivatives of our language must be kept clear of 
the associations which cling to the derivatives of another — 
unless there is good evidence to shew that the derived idea 
was developed before the separation of the two peoples — is 
not always observed even by eminent philologists. 

To pass from roots to words whose simple sense and simi- 
1 G. E. 1U. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 39 

lar form allow us to claim for them a common representative 
in Indo-European days, we find k in kara the " head." This 
form is certain from the Zend cara — though the Sanskrit 
has allowed the a to pass into i, and kept only a secondary 
form, giras — the Greek icapa and the Latin cere-brum the 
"brain." Ennius' well-known separation of this word into 
its two parts " head-bearing" (or perhaps "born") may, I 
think, shew that some sense survived even in his day of 
the first part having once signified the head, if we take into 
account the frequency of its occurrence in other (less obvious) 
compounds, as crista (=cere-sta) cervix (from veh to carry), 
and the fact that such tmeses were not likely to be used by 
old writers, unless the feeling of the word being a compound 
was vivid ; compare ordia prima and facit are in Lucretius 
(iv. 28, vi. 962). The second part of a compound or a deri- 
vative suffix attached to the original noun signifying "head" 
is the n in the Goth, hvair-nei, the German Him and Ge- 
liirn, and the Lowland Scotch hams, all meaning "brains". 

Ka denoted "who" in Indo-Eur., and was retained un- 
altered in Sanskrit and Lithuanian : it was changed, pro- 
bably through the same indistinct pronunciation, in Gothic 
into hva and Latin into quo: the Ionic alone in Hellas 
retained the primary form in kov, /colo? (= fco-yo-s), while the 
other dialects substituted it for k. 

Lastly, Jcatvar must have been the primitive form from 
which through many changes, some of which will come before 
our notice later on, came the Sk. chatvdras, the Gk. rer Fape? 
(a form which does not occur, but is necessary to explain 
the dialectical variants Teaaapes and reTopes), the Lat. qua- 
tuor, Gothic fidvor, and Lith. keturi. It will be observed 
in both the last examples that a majority of the derived 
languages exhibit a labial sound which either occurs after 
the guttural (as v or u) or has altogether driven it out of 
the field, remaining itself as p or v : and the ch in chatvdras 



40 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

must have been produced by some consonant following after 
the original k. These facts go far to shew that this subse- 
quent labial was Indo-European, as is asserted by Leo Meyer 1 . 
Its origin will be discussed hereafter when I speak of the 
phonetic effects of indistinct articulation, to which (following 
Prof. Curtius) I believe it to be due. Other philologists 
assign to this labial an independent existence : amongst 
them Dr Donaldson 2 , who is enabled to see in the com- 
pound — kp — the origin of the Digamma. 



(Indo-Eur. T = Sk. t, th = Gr. t = Lat. t = Goth, th, d 
= O.H. G.d = Lith. t) 

A very important root is TA, strengthened probably in 
very early times to TAN : the stronger form is found in all 
the branches of the family. Thus we have in Sanskrit TAN 
"to stretch," though the past participle ta-ta-s is to be 
referred to the older and simpler form. The Greek has the 
forms TA, TAN and TEN preserved in ra-o-is, re-rav-os and 
rev-cov respectively. The simple idea has been very gene- 
rally retained : relvco and tendo, the Goth, thanja and Lith. 
tempju, each mean "I stretch out," or "extend." Various 
secondary significations are found — in rdvaos; in tenuis, tener, 
tenax; in German dilnn and our "thin." Lastly, there 
seems little doubt that to this same root should be referred 
O. H. G. doner, and our "thunder," slight though the connec- 
tion of idea may appear 3 . 
(Formation This formation of a new root by addiug a nasal to the 
simplest form is not uncommon and very old. Thus the 



of second 
ary from 



primary Y00 ^ qj± « ^o produce" had by its side in Indo-European 

1 Vergl. Gram. i. 29. 2 New Grat. § 110. 

3 Sec Max Miiller, n. 93. Farrar, Chapters on Language, 177. Curtius, 
(I.E. 196. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 41 

times GAN with the same sense : MA was strengthened into roots by the 
MAN, though perhaps the simpler form retained generally « co l nso . J 
more of the simple signification of "measuring" while the nant -"> 
latter expressed the abstract idea — needed even in those 
days — of "thinking." Similarly in Sanskrit HA "to kill" 
was expanded to HAN with the same sense ; and if the 
Greek <f>ev in 7re(£(e)z>G>, &c. be the same root, the secondary 
form must also be ascribed to ancient times. The deve- 
lopment of BHA to "shine" into BHAN is found also in 
Sanskrit and Greek: the new root is well employed, but with 
a curious difference, by the two peoples. While the Greeks 
employed the simple root chiefly in the sense of making 
bright or clear by language, i. e. of speaking as in <£«//, t, 
(frr/fiy 1 , they employed the secondary root to denote the 
original sense, as (jxilvco, §avr\ a "torch:" the Hindus on the 
other hand kept the primary sense to the primary root ; 
while BHAN appears in the Vedas as "to praise." This 
difference of meaning seems to me to indicate that although 
this method of modifying a root was known to our Indo- 
European fathers, yet they did not employ it to denote any 
very definite change of idea : that its origin may probably 
have been phonetic 2 , the nasal being a not very distinct after 
sound — something like the so-called v ifaXfcvcrTitcov — arising 
perhaps from an imperfect opening of the lips and consequent 
passage of the current of air through the nose. This seems 
more probable than the theory which I formerly held ; that 
these secondary verbs were denominative, i.e. formed from a 
participle or some other nominal derivative of the simpler 
verb : as for example tvtt-tq) might be a denominative verb 

1 The apparent exception 0aos is probably to be referred to another 
secondary root </>ap, which is found in the Pindaric virbcpavris (Pyth. 11. 76), 
and vir6(pav<ns, Herod. 7. 36; the former word having the derived, the latter 
the primary meaning. 

2 If so, this phenomenon is distinct (at least in its origin) from "Nasali- 
Bation," under which Prof. Curtius classes it (Tempora und Modi, p. 56). 



42 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

formed from tvtt-to the past participle of the simple tutt. 
But though many verbs were doubtless thus formed, espe- 
cially in later stages of the language, this hypothesis seems 
hardly to explain a modification of a simple root into another 
root, without any intervening base. The whole question of 
the formation of secondary roots though interesting must 
remain for ever impossible of certain solution. Prof. Curtius 
has discussed the chief hypotheses 1 — that they are formed 
from nominal bases, as mentioned above — that they are com- 
binations of two simple roots, an ingenious theory much 
employed by Prof. Pott — or that the new element is a prono- 
minal stem, employed to define still further the simple root. 
To all these theories he raises objections, of a somewhat 
a priori character, and not (in my opinion) conclusive. I 
think it possible that all these methods of formation may 
have been in use, and that each may be credited with a 
share of the numerous secondary roots : the largest share 
being probably due to the second. Thus for example it is 
certainly not impossible that tendo may be (as Pott suggests 2 ) 
simply a combination of the roots TEN and DO, (Indo- 
Eur. DHA, Gr. 6e) to " place." No one doubts that ab-do, 
con-do &c. are all formed from this root, which may in time 
have lost its etymological sense, and come to be regarded as 
merely a formative element, and therefore employed even in 
cases like tendo, where the combination is no longer etymo- 
logically appropriate. 

An especially large number of these secondary roots clus- 
ter round the root STA, another very early root in which our 
consonant T occurs. It is found with singularly little change 
of form (it has become STHA in Sanskrit where t after s regu- 
larly passes into th) and none of meaning in all the derived 
languages : and the radical sense is also perceptible in nearly 
all the derivatives : thus crTrjficov is the " upright" of the 
1 G. E. p. 65. a El. Forsch. n. -181, 2 ed. 



III.] TEE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 43 

loom: sta-bulum, the place where cattle stand, &c. But there 
are numerous derivatives, less obviously connected with the 
idea of standing, from the secondary roots, — all Indo-Euro- 
pean— STAL, STAV, STAMBH, &c— STAL is affirmed by 
the Gk. crT6\e^o<;, our " stalk," the German stiel: in areXkco 
the sense is apparently causal, and prce-stol-or, is "I place 
myself in front of another;" the etymological sense however 
being so far lost that in the earliest times we know the verb 
is found with an accusative: and it was probably a revival 
of the feeling of the derivation that connects it with a dative 
in the writings of Cicero. From STAV 1 we have crravpos, 
and stiva: the Homeric arev/juac seems to connect itself with 
this root more naturally than with any other; as in II. III. 
83, where Hector arevrai to eVo? ipeeuv, "is steadfast to 
speak;" — the meaning found in Sk. sthdvara and the Gothic 
stiviti, "endurance." The derivatives of STAMBH are not 
easy to distinguish from those of a simpler form STAP, which 
has furnished Sanskrit with the causal of STA and is the base 
of the Latin stipare, and the German Stift, our "stub;" but 
the stronger form is seen in Sk. stambha a "post," Gk. arefju- 
<f)v\ov, pressed olives or grapes, and German stamp/ and 
stampfen 2 , our "stump" and "stamp." The primary mean- 
ing of STAP would seem to have been to "cause to 
stand," or "support": that of STAMBH to "press"— but the 
close resemblance of the two forms as well as of their 
meanings has caused confusion in several of the derivatives. 

The very remarkable root TAK is admirably described 
by Prof. Curtius 3 : it has varied in some derived languages 
into TEK and TOK: and it has also a by-form TUK, 
occurring both in Sanskrit and Greek, and another by-form 
TIK, found however only in Lithuanian ; and yet three ap- 
parently distinct significations, to "beget" (e.g. reKelv), to 

1 Curtius, Gr. Et. 192. 2 Gr. Et. 193. 

8 Gr. Et. 57, and 198. 



44 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

"hit" (rogov, Tv%eZv), and to "construct" (rifcrcov, tvkos;), are 
found in the first two languages indifferently expressed by 
the three forms, and in Lithuanian all by modifications of 
TIK. I should be disposed to think that the main forms, 
tak, tih, tuk, are all Indo-European, and probably each at 
first had its own meaning; but that the formation of several 
derivatives, very similar to each other in sense, from the dif- 
ferent roots, led to confusion between those roots in the very 
earliest times. 



P. 

(Ind-Eur. P= Sk. p, ph = Gr. tt = Lat. p = Goth. /, p = 
O. H. G. /, b [the latter in the middle of a word] = Lith. p.) 

A root which has played a large part at least in the Greek 
and Latin languages is PAR. It is Indo-European, for it 
occurs though not often in Sanskrit in the sense of "bringing 
over," only Yedic 1 : also in the Gothic farjan, with the same 
sense, the German Fahrt and other words, and our "way- 
farer." But it is in the Greek and Latin that this root has 
been most fertile, and produced the largest variety of mean- 
ings. The sense of Sk. piparmi, and Gothic farjan, is found 
in Trepan, so common in Homer (e.g. Od. xv. 453) for "carry- 
ing over sea for sale;" and this connecting link justifies us in 
connecting with this root TmrpacrKW, 7rplafiai, e/jL7ropo<; and 
others. The simple idea of "crossing" is found in irepaco used 
as a neuter verb, iropo^, iropOfios &c. ; portus and porta are 
also purely local : irelpa (for wep-ya) and periculum mark the 
transition to the world of abstract conception, and efjuireipos 
and peritus are applied to the man who has "gone through" 
many things. 

The root PA to "protect" had already given the Indo- 

1 Benfey, Sk. Diet. s. v. 






III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 45 

Europeans the word patar a "father" — easily recognisable in 
every derived speech. It also produced pati a "master," 
which we find unaltered in Sanskrit, in Greek as iroat^ — and 
the Latin potis, compo(ti)s, potior, &c, are clearly to be re- 
ferred to the same root. So also is the second part of the 
compound Secr7roT7;?, whatever may be origin of the much 
disputed first syllable 1 . 

An Indo-European preposition apa, "off," "from," 
may be pretty confidently assumed as the basis of Sk. apa, 
Gr. airo, Lat. ah, Goth, of, German ab (in which changes 
Grimm's law is justified), the Scotch aff and our "off" or "of." 
In most other prepositions there is so much variety both in 
sound and sense in the different languages that identification 
is very difficult and uncertain; as indeed was to be expected 
from the wear and tear by constant use of such small words. 
But this seems to me one of the strongest reasons for reject- (p tfs 
ing the ingenious theory of Pott — at least in the wide appli- ^o^daru 
cation which he gives it — that numberless roots and words are roots— 

m m formed 

formed out of simpler roots preceded by a mutilated preposi- from pri- 
tion in composition with it. Relying on the unquestionable Ty^prepo- 
fact that such mutilation is found extensively in Sanskrit Sltwn ^ u ' h 

J was ajter- 

words and even roots — thus for example it can hardly be wards ma- 
doubted that dhyai "to think" is from adhi+i, "to go over" 
on the analogy of adhi-gam "to go over" or "read," and that 
tyaj to "leave" is from ati+aj to "cast over" or "away," — re- 
lying also on the fact that this principle of corruption has 
undoubtedly operated in modern languages : thus e.g. "bishop" 
has been cut down from iiricricoiros; and "pistola" is the 
modern Italian for epi-stola; on this evidence he throws this 
process back to Indo-European times. The lawfulness of this 
method has been strongly denied by Prof. Curtius 2 , — princi- 
pally on the grounds that such analytical formations of words 

1 Gr. FA. 256. 2 Gr. Et. 32. 



46 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

are foreign to the character of an early people : and that as a 
matter of fact the connection between a prefix and verb in 
the oldest time was not so intimate as to combine them to- 
gether into one word, the slightness of the connection being 
felt even after the separation of languages, as is proved by 
the agreement of the Greek and Sanskrit in placing the aug- 
ment and the reduplicated syllable between the prefix and 
the verbal base. To these and other arguments Pott replies 1 
with great animation, and I think with some success. But 
his method is more open to objection when he applies it to 
the derivation of isolated Greek and Latin words, where 
there are cognate derivatives from the suffixed root, and 
where the preposition itself is somewhat dubious. We may 
grant the great probability and wonder at the ingenuity of 
such derivations as 7rte£ft> from eVt-fefo) "I sit upon 2 ;" of 
(JhSItlov the Spartan word for the common weal from "(£tSm7? 
i.e. assessor, from e<£/§» for hn-i'Cpixai* -" and admit even the 
possibility that iriOos a "wine-jar" may be from eiri-Oe, "to 
set upon;" because in all these and many other cases our 
analysis leads us to a preposition which we know to be a 
Greek preposition, and to roots which are Greek roots. But 
the case is very different when Prof. Pott derives, for example, 
the Latin piscis 4 from the Indo-European preposition api 
which is the Greek eVt, and a root chhad, which is purely a 
Sanskrit weakening of original SKAD, whence comes the 
Gothic skadus, Germ, schatten, or "shadow." SKAD meant 
to "cover," and piscis is supposed by Prof. Pott to be the 
"over-covered" with scales, the squamigerum genus of Lucre- 
tius. This, of course, is possible ; but the derivation lacks 
every element of certainty. The preposition api is generally 
supposed to appear as ob in Latin : but this is very doubtful, 
and in any case the form ob would not suit the present 

1 Et. Forsch. II. 320 et seqq. 2 lb. i. 514. 

* lb. i. 572. 4 lb. i. 515. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 47 

derivation: and the existence of skad in Latin can scarcely 
be assumed as certain from a possible derivative castrum 
for skad-trum: while a simpler form SKI, which would 
certainly be much more suitable for our need, and which 
does appear in the Greek a/aa, does not seem to have any 
representative whatever in Latin. We must then deem this 
derivation, together with many others of this most ingenious 
etymologist, to be "not proven." 



G 

Ind.-Eur. G = Sk. g, j = Gr. 7 = Lat. g = Goth. k = 0. H. G. 2. Soft 

, , T . . , momentary 

k, ch = Lith. g, z. sounds _ 

Turning now from the hard to the soft consonants we 
find that G occurs in some of the most important roots of the 
common speech. Examples are hardly needed to shew the 
extent to which the roots GA and GNN to "produce" have 
spread their branches through every language of the family. 
In all of these the radical meaning is plainly discernible. But {Secondary 
it is remarkable that not only GAN but also the closely con- e d by the 
nected form GNA to "know" can also be traced through all "f^jZl 
the derived languages, and there can be no doubt that the ™wel.) 
Indo-Europeans had definitely separated the two roots to 
denote one the physical, the other the mental operation. 
GNA appears as JNA in Sanskrit, TND, in Greek — GNA 
(gnarus), GNO (gnosco) in Latin; in all these we see the long 
vowel, which however may be only accidental similarity: the 
Lith. znati, the 0. H. G. knau and our "know," agree in 
keeping the vowel after the compound consonant: but the 
Gothic kunnan and modern German kennen, show that the 
difficulty of the sound led to transposition of the vowel; 
while it commonly caused the loss of the first consonant 
in Latin, as in now en, netware = gnari-gare, &c, and among 



48 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

the Greeks (who objected less than the Italians to initial 
groups of consonants) in ovojma for o-yvo-fia 1 . 

1 Not yovo/j.a, as Prof. Key thinks we are driven to assume, in his 
attack on the "prosthetic vowel" (Philological Soc. Trans. 1862-3, p. 155). 
This "prosthesis" seems to be one of the enormities of the "German School 
of Linguistic Science." No doubt the principle may be applied too often ; 
but surely Prof. Key himself would not deny the existence of such euphonic 
vowels, which will be discussed in a later lecture. His derivation, however, 
of 60/5i5s from ow-<ppv = " eye-brow" on the analogy of b<p-da\fibs, instead of 
regarding the o as prosthetic, is ingenious and certainly possible. 

The well-known essay of Prof. Key, to which I have here referred, con- 
tains much that every philologist must sympathise with, who does not be- 
lieve Sanskrit to be the one guide to philology, and Sanskrit forms to be the 
ultimate forms. In this I quite agree with Prof. Key. Thus he justly 
ridicules the enormous list of roots found in Bopp's Sanskrit Lexicon, to 
each of which is assigned by Indian grammarians the idea of "going." 
But no sound philologist would now take one of these mysterious roots and 
apply it at random to the derivation of some isolated word in another 
language which may contain no other trace of the root in question. These 
roots are at best only Indian, and it is quite possible that further investiga- 
tion of the Sanskrit may lead to differentiation of the meaning of such of 
these roots as are real roots, and not the invention of Indian grammarians, 
just as in Greek we can distinguish shades of difference between the roots I, 
BA, SEPII, &c, all of which have the general signification of going, but, 
originally at least, of going in a particular way. No doubt in Bopp's Sans- 
krit Lexicon there is no discrimination between these roots ; and Bopp and 
his immediate followers may have employed them unwisely in etymology. 
Further, no doubt, many of Bopp's speculations as to the origin of suffixes 
are pure speculations, and though perhaps as probable as any other, yet 
essentially incapable of verification. But why does Prof. Key consider all 
the labours of the " German School" to be summed up in the hypotheses of 
Bopp? Apparently because Max Miiller has said that Bopp's Comparative 
Grammar "will form for ever the safe and solid basis of Comparative 
Philology." This may be the slightly exaggerated expression of reverence 
for the Newton of linguistic science — though it is certainly true of the grand 
principle of affinity of languages which Bopp was the first definitely to 
establish. But certainly Prof. Max Miiller does not ignore the modifications, 
extensions and corrections of Bopp's theories which have been effected by 
the labours of men lite Benfey, Curtius, Corssen, Schleicher, and hosts of 
other German scholars. And to regard Bopp as the final authority of the 
"German School" on all questions of language seems to me much the same 
as it would be in a review of the discoveries of physical science to disregard 
all later investigations, and to regard all scientific questions as bound up with 
the corpuscular theory of light because Newton believed it. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 49 

The origin of the final a in secondary roots like GN A is 
very uncertain. They are not uncommon : thus in Greek we 
have r\d by the side of ra\; B/jud by the side of Bajm, &c. 
Schleicher seems to hold a convertibility of position for the 
vowel: that it can be sounded before or after the last conso- 
nant at pleasure : while the new root form was taken, if 
wanted, to express a new idea (as in the case of yvco), in 
others, where no such want was felt, the two roots were used 
indifferently. Benfey would rather regard the final a as 
produced by accent falling on the connecting-vowel between 
the root and verbal- termination, e.g. gan-a-mi, which forced 
out the radical vowel and formed thereby a practically new 
verb ready to bear a different sense. In either case, the 
vowel would be produced by phonetic, not dynamic causes. 

The presence of G in an Indo-European noun bhaga. is 
probable from the Gk. (£97709, Lat. fagus, German buche, our 
"beech," and presumably the Gothic boka, a "book," origi- 
nally signified the tree which supplied the material. There 
is no Sanskrit equivalent ; therefore the antiquity of the 
word cannot be called certain. That the word has different 
meanings — in Greek, the " oak," in Latin and Teutonic, the 
"beech" is well known. The reason has been discussed by 
Prof. Max Muller in a very interesting appendix to the fifth 
Lecture of his second series. He ingeniously suggests that 
" the Teutonic and Italic Aryans witnessed the transition of 
the oak period into the beech period, of the bronze age into 
the iron age, and that while the Greeks retained phegos in 
its original sense, the Teutonic and Italian colonists trans- 
ferred the name as an appellative to the new forests that 
were springing up in their new home." The great antiquity 
thus claimed for the Aryan settlement in Europe of course 
seems at first (as it seemed to Prof. Max Muller) to condemn 
this theory: but really we know nothing of the date of the 
settlement, and cannot therefore disprove the hypothesis on 
P. L. 4" 



50 TEE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

that ground. But though it seems to me far from impro- 
bable, yet I think a simpler explanation of the difference is to 
be found in the supposition that at the time of the separation 
of the peoples the common name used by them meant simply 
" the tree," not necessarily the oak, as assumed by Prof. Max 
Mullen and that this name was then applied after the sepa- 
ration to the different trees which were either most common, 
or most useful to them, in their respective countries 1 . Ana- 
logous is the restriction of meaning of the Indo-European 
drus, our "tree" — to the oak in Greece — though both in the 
Eastern and the North- Western families the word always 
kept its general sense. This gradual restriction of a general 
term to a particular meaning is one of the most interesting 
tendencies in language, modern as well as ancient: examples 
are plentiful in English, e.g. undertaker, artist, &c. are now 
restricted to one particular calling. 



D. 

(Indo-Eur. 2)=Sk. d, dh=Gr. S=Lat. d=Goth. £=0. H. G. 
z, s£=Lith. d.) 

One of the most obvious roots in which this letter occurs is 
DA, " to give," though hardly any language but the Latin has 
retained the vowel unmodified. Thus the Sanskrit form is DA , 
it being a principle of Sanskrit phonetics that no root shall 
end in short a ; probably because the pronunciation of this 
vowel was so weakened in Sanskrit — it was sounded some- 
thing like the u in our "sun" — that the root would have 
been too liable to corruption, if it had ended with so weak a 
sound. The Greek form is AO, the Latin DA — the o in 

1 The derivation of the name from the root BHAG contradicts no phonetic 
laws, and is sufficiently probable; but the connection between a tree and 
eating is not sufficiently close to warrant us in assuming the derivation as 
certain. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 51 

do(ti)s, donum, &c. may be due to vowel-intensification — the 
Lithuanian is DU. The Sclavonic keeps the short a un- 
changed : in the Gothic and German the root does not appear. 
It has not been fertile in any language of derivatives which 
express anything beyond the radical idea. 

A more interesting root is DIV 1 , which originally no 
doubt meant " to be bright," though this sense is not found 
in any derived language. In Sanskrit DIV means to "play" 
— possibly a derived signification, or perhaps the two roots 
were originally distinct — but the original sense is retained in 
DYU, where the v seems to have passed into the cognate 
vowel, and then i passed into its corresponding semi-vowel, 
the reason being probably that v could not easily be sounded 
before suffixes beginning with a consonant: whence e.g. div-ti 
passed into dyuti; compare virofyavris from root <I>A F (above, 
p. 41, note 1). And a root DIV in the sense of brightness, is 
abundantly evidenced by the numerous Sanskrit words for 
"sky" and " day" derived from it, — div-a, div-asa, div-ana, dina 
(perhaps shortened from divana), &c. The same meaning 
"day" is found in the Latin dies, and compounds such as 
nu-dius, biduum (= bi-d(i)u-um) ; and the Lith. deva. The 
conception of God as "brightness" is universal among the 
Indo-European peoples. Thus the Sk. deva, Greek Al( F)o?, 
Latin deus, Lithuanian devas and Norse tivor, all come from 
this root : and seem (with the exception perhaps of the Norse 
form) to be formed by the same affix. As the word means 
"God," and that only, in all the languages, it seems more 
probable that the conception of Deity was primarily that of 
" the bright one," than that the word meant first " bright," 
then " the sky," and then, like the Sanskrit Dyaus, (by one 
of those mistaken metaphors which, as Prof. Max Muller has 
shewn, lead to so much mythology), passed finally to the idea 
of God: indeed the distinction between the sky and God, is 
1 Curt. Gr. Et. p. 213. 

4—2 



52 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

at least as old as the old word for the " sky father," which 
parted into the Sanskrit Dyaus-piter and the Latin Jup-piter. 
Lastly, Prof. Curtius is probably right in attributing to this 
root the curious Homeric forms Biaro — "he seemed" (Od. vi. 
242) — and Bodaaaro (11. XIII. 458, &c), just as SeeXo? {II. X. 
466), &fj\o$, with the by-form Blako? (= StF-a-Xo-?) mentioned 
by Hesychius, are certainly from it: all alike have lost the 
primary sense of "appearing brightly," and retained the 
general sense of appearing in any way. The affinity of the 
two verbs was recognised by Buttmann 1 ; but he refers them 
to Bdco — found in BeSaa and Barjvau — to "teach" or "learn," 
which seems much less satisfactory. 
(Specials The process here assumed, by which a root with a mean- 

Toots!) m g originally special, has in certain derivatives lost that nar- 
rower sense and retained a perfectly general meaning, is ex- 
ceedingly interesting. It has been already mentioned (note 
to p. 48) : and one of the most interesting chapters in Cur- 
tius' great work 2 is that in which he shews that the numerous 
roots by which the Greeks could denote the general idea of 
"seeing" (e.g. VID, VOE, SKEP, DRAK, LUK, and many 
others) meant all primarily to see or look in some very spe- 
cial way; and whilst one set of derivatives from each (in- 
cluding the simple verb) retained only the colourless mean- 
ing of seeing, others in each case remained faithful to their 
original sense. Thus ISeiv, opav, aKoirelv, Spa/ceiv, Xevaaeiv, 
to a Greek all meant simply "to see:" and yet FcS must origi- 
nally have expressed seeing with some kind of recognition, 
whence vid in Sanskrit and ol&a in Greek came to mean " to 
know:" Fop "to look with care" retained its old sense in wpa, 
Latin vereor and our "warden:" crtceir "to look out eagerly" is 
still vivid in o-/co7r6s : Spate "to look bright" has its full force in 
hpdicaDv : and a similar sense may have originally belonged to 
LUK (whence a strengthened stem XevK gives us Xevo-ao) 
1 Lexilogus, p. 212. 2 Gr. Et. pp. 90—96. 



III.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 53 

and Xev/cos) which gave the Latins lu(c)men, lu(c)na, and us 
our " light." 

If we pass from roots to words, we shall find the fact 
that the Indo-Europeans were not mere nomad shepherds 
but settled in fixed abodes, established (as is well known) 
by the appearance among so many of the peoples of the 
same word for a home. Then dama-s is attested as the 
original form by the Sk. damas, Gr. 86fio^ Lat. domus, 
and Sclav, domu: while the Gothic timrja a "builder," the 
German zimmer, and our "timber," are all probably akin. 
We cannot of course infer that the houses of that time were 
built of timber: rather timber was in its primary significa- 
tion, "building material." 

B. 

Original B ought on the analogy of the other soft conso- 
nants to be represented by Sk. b, bh, Gr. /3, Lat. b, Goth, p, 
0. H. G. t, and Lith. b. But it is very remarkable that there 
are hardly any instances where a word can be traced in the 
required forms through even a few of these languages. 
There seems to be absolutely no instance where the Gothic p 
occurs so as to correspond to a Greek and Latin b. From 
this Grassmann concludes 1 that b (at all events as an initial 
sound) was not in use before the separation of languages (an 
exception being made in the case of some obviously onomato- 
poetic words, as Gr. /SX^o), Lat. halo, Germ, bloke, Sclav. 
bleja, " I bleat"), and that consequently the words found in 
those languages with initial b must have corrupted it from 
some other sound. This can be shewn of the Greek and 
Latin in a great number of cases, which will come under our 
consideration when we describe the phonetic laws of those 
languages at length. Thus (to take one or two examples) 
1 Zeitschrift, xn. 122. 



54 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Leot. III. 

fiapvs was once yFapv-s, Lat. gravis: ftopd was yFopa, Lat. 
(g)uorare: in ftovXofxai, j3e\ri(ov, and others, the /3 is a dia- 
lectical hardening, difficult to account for, of v, while the 
same hardening in $piC,a, ftpe^co, &c. was caused by the fol- 
lowing r: in fiporos and others the ft is parasitic and sprang 
up between jjl and p (pLporos), the first of which it afterwards 
displaced: lastly, initial b is sometimes a corruption of bh, as 
in fipefico, and the Lat. balaena, where the Greek exhibits 
4>a\cuva. Grassmann has, I think, shewn fully that b was 
not originally ever used at the beginning of a word : and 
the only plea which Schleicher can put in for asserting its 
use at all, is that it is assumed by the aspirate bh, which is 
later, and yet certainly Indo-European : and the improba- 
bility of its not belonging to the original speech, while it is 
yet found in all the derived speeches. With this somewhat 
unsatisfactory title to house-room, I must leave it to your 
generosity to accept it. 



LECTURE IV. 

INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET {continued). 

From the hard and soft unaspirated momentary sounds or Momentary 
f checks," we pass to the aspirates. Here we find the SLfl. " 
assumed aspirates of the original speech are not represented 3- As P l - 
in the derived languages with nearly so much regularity as 
we have hitherto found. The reason is obvious; they are 
more difficult sounds to pronounce : they are compound, or 
at least were so originally, consisting of the unaspirated 
sound followed by a breath, which breath may perhaps, as 
Prof. Max Muller thinks 1 , have differed from the rough breath- 
ing or spiritus asper. Be this as it may, it seems fairly certain, 
as the same authority states, that " neither the hard nor the 
soft aspirates were originally mere breaths. They are both 
based on complete contact, and thus differ from the hard and 
soft breaths which sometimes take their place in cognate 
tongues." The possibility of this change will come under 
our notice further on, when we are considering more fully the 
history of the aspirates in Greek. But we are met here by a 
difficulty which has been already alluded to. Since the weak 
aspirates are found in so few of the derived languages — in no 

1 Lect. ii. H8. 



56 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

one European member of the family; and since the hard 
aspirates are found in Greek, are we justified in assuming 
that gh, dh, bh, are the original forms of the aspirates, and 
not kh, th, ph? This latter view is actually adopted by some 
philologists in order to avoid the obvious difficulty of deriv- 
ing stronger from weaker aspirates : and this is by far the 
weightiest in the list of the arguments in its favour which 
are stated by Prof. Kuhn 1 , and are answered seriatim by 
Prof. Curtius 2 . But this difficulty is at least in great part 
removed by regarding the aspirates as compound sounds, 
which act upon each other like all other combinations. This 
possibility will be considered when we treat of the Greek 
aspirates. But if the second member of the compound — 
the h, is really the spiritus asper, the change from gh to kh 
is simply an assimilation of the g by the h, just as g is 
assimilated by the t in actus (root ag). I have however 
already mentioned that the identity of the h with the 
spiritus asper is denied by Prof. Max Miiller 3 on physio- 
logical grounds which I do not quite understand. 

But may not both classes of aspirates have existed in Indo- 
Did the European times, as both are found in the Sanskrit ? Yet 
°lanquaae this theory will not entirely solve the problem, for the hard 
aspirates in Greek correspond generally to the soft aspirates 



hard as 

well as soft in Sanskrit, and these soft aspirates are not likely to have 
been weakened forms peculiar to Sanskrit; still the change 
becomes at least less violent and extensive. This view has 
been very powerfully supported by Prof. Grassmann 4 . He 
points out that the soft aspirates of the Sanskrit are found in 
Keltic, Gothic, Lithuanian and Sclavonic, as soft unaspirated 
letters: also in the same languages the hard aspirates of 
the Sanskrit appear as hard unaspirated sounds (except in 

1 In his review of Schleicher's Compendium, Zeitschrift, x. 302. 

2 Gr. Et. 376. 3 Lect. n. 148, and 204 note. 

4 Zeitseh. xii. 82, &c. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 57 

Gothic where they are sometimes treated as the Sanskrit 
hards), but at all events they never appear as soft sounds. 
Each aspirated sound would seem to have simply lost its 
breath, but never passed from hard to soft, or vice versa. 
This difference, he argues, speaks for a different origin of the 
two classes. Similarly in Latin the soft aspirates of the 
Sanskrit appear as soft letters, or as h or f, though f is in- 
deed generally a hard breath. Yet in Latin he believes 
it to have had a weaker sound originally, from its frequent 
interchange with b (as fui, but ama-bam, ruf m and ruber) , 
and from its being represented by the symbol of the Greek 
Digamma. In any case this / is found only at the beginning 
of words : and as a general rule the Latin represents the soft 
aspirate by a soft unaspirated letter. In Greek these soft 
aspirates appear regularly, as %, 0, <j) : but in any case where 
the aspiration is lost (e. g. /leya, Sanskrit mahat for maghat) 
the representant is always a soft, never a hard letter — (thus 
pointing incidentally to the fact that the Greek aspirate even 
after the separation was at first a weak sound, though after- 
wards hardened) — while the exchange which we find in 
Greek between the hard aspirated and unaspirated letter, is 
mostly confined to the cases where the aspirate corresponds 
to the hard aspirate of Sanskrit: e.g. in Sanskrit we have 
the root sphar, to " vibrate," in the causal to " throw," 
cognate to which is the Greek a(f>aipa and also airalpco, 
where there is no aspirate : and there is a considerable num- 
ber of cases where the Greek and Sanskrit hard aspirate are 
found in correspondence, e.g. olaOa = vet-tha. From all this 
he concludes that the hard aspirates of the Sanskrit existed 
in the common speech, before the separation of Greek and 
Sanskrit. Did they exist still earlier ? No information can 
be got from Keltic, Lithuanian or Sclavonian, for in them the 
hard letters correspond to Sanskrit hard aspirated and unas- 
pirated letters. But in the Gothic he seems to see a distinc- 



58 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

tion between the Sanskrit hard and soft aspirates : namely 
that Sanskrit th, dh, t = Goth, t, d, th respectively : thus 
the Sanskrit termination of the 2 sing, perfect, -tha (Greek 
6a) is in Goth, -t: the Sanskrit participle termination -tas 
— Gothic -ths : while in the cases — which are many — where 
this correspondence does not hold, and where th is found 
both in Sanskrit and Gothic, he holds the th to be a later 
development of the Sanskrit : which is indeed the principle 
which other scholars apply to explain the whole class of 
Sanskrit hard aspirates. On this evidence then from the 
Gothic he considers the hard aspirates to date back to the 
times before the first separation of languages. 

How then is the confusion in Greek of the two originally 
distinct classes of aspirates, which the Hindus retained dis- 
tinct to be explained? Prof. Grassmann 1 considers this phe- 
nomenon to be in accordance with the genius of the Greek 
language, which develops the vowel-system, but allows the 
consonants to decay. Consequently the aspirates had a 
tendency to become all hard or all weak. After a they were 
obliged to remain hard : in analogy with this the weak aspi- 
rates at the beginning of words first became hard, whilst 
those within words remained much longer weak: but finally 
hardened also. 

In all this there seems to me nothing impossible. The 
evidence indeed supplied by the Gothic is insufficient to carry 
back the hard aspirates to the times before the -separation of 
the North- Western family of nations. But at least a strong 
prima, facie case has been made out for their occurrence before 
the parting of the South- Western peoples. The question 
which is left to be decided is this: is the number of words con- 
taining a hard aspirate and common to the Greek and the 
Sanskrit — e.g. fcoy^V — cankha — sufficiently great to force us 
to believe that they must have belonged to the common lan- 
1 Zcitschrift, p. 99. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 59 

guage before the division, and not developed in the different 
languages, after the division, from causes which acted equally 
on each? In the example given above there is no appearance 
of any such cause, and the difficulty of believing that the 
Greeks and Hindus separately aspirated the k is greater in 
this particular case than that of supposing that it was aspirated 
hy their common ancestors. But in a large number of cases 
we may trace a cause which might easily affect both peoples 
though not necessarily to the same degree : most important 
of these is an s preceding the hard letter; which we know 
produced numerous aspirates in Sanskrit after the separation, 
and which may therefore well have exerted something of the 
same power in Greece. This would account for coincidences 
like that between Sanskrit sphal and cr^aXkw: perhaps even 
for the 6 in ola-Oa: and other less obvious phonetic influ- 
ences may well have acted in other places. 

Prof. Curtius rejects Grassmann's hypothesis, though 
doubtfully, on the ground that such questions must be de- 
cided not by comparison of a few isolated words in different 
languages, but by examining the consonantal systems of the 
languages as a whole : from which he sees that corresponding to 
the Greek hard aspirates there appear as a rule soft letters in 
all the other families : and he concludes that it is much more 
probable that the Greek aspirates should be isolated examples 
of strengthening soft original sounds, than that all the other 
languages should have weakened the original hard aspirates so 
completely as to leave no trace behind of intermediate k, t, p, 
through which in some cases at least they must have passed \ 
I must leave you to settle for yourselves which view you 
think most probable : and I proceed to point out the occur- 
rence in the early speech of those letters which both parties 
agree in attributing to it, the weak aspirates. 

1 Gr. Ei. 376. 



6o THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 



GH. 

(Indo-Eur. GH=8k. gh, h = Gr. % = Lat. h (initial), g 
(medial) = Gotb. g = 0. H. G. g, k = Lith. g, z.) 

There has been little change of meaning though much 
apparent change of form in the derivatives of YAGH to 
"carry." Tt is the Sanskrit VAH (where as constantly in 
Sanskrit the h seems to have driven the media out of the 
field), the Greek (F)EX, Lat. VEH (where the h must still 
have had some guttural sound, or it would not have assimi- 
lated itself to a subsequent hard, as in vec-tum, &c, and 
therefore differed from the h which the Romans took from 
Cumae with the Greek alphabet, where it was a weakening 
from spirants, not aspirates) 1 , Goth VAG, Lith. VEZ. A 
carriage is vah-ana-m, cr^o-?, vehi-culu-m, vegos, vez-ima-s 
(each of the five languages forming the noun by its own 
peculiar suffix), the German wagen and our "waggon:" and 
via (=veh-ya), Gothic vegs, denote a "way" in two of the 
languages: 0^X09 and vah-a-ti, a Sanskrit word for a river, 
have no parallels in the other languages 2 . 

The colour "green" is denoted by words so obviously 
identical in the derived languages that we must refer them 
to a common origin, a root GHAR ; which however is 
probably distinct from the root of the same form expressing 
"desire" or "pleasure" which occurs in the Greek ^alpetv, 
Latin gratus, German gierig and our "greedy 3 ." Thus grass 
is %Xot7, and zole in Lithuanian : and vegetables are holera 
in Latin and zel-ije in Sclavonic : and "grass-colour" is in 

1 Corssen, Ausspr. &c. 1. 47. 2 Gr. Et. 175. 

3 Prof. Max Muller assigns to this root the original meaning of ''fatness" 
(Lect. 11. 381), Prof. Sonne "light;" and no doubt pleasure is a secondary 
idea derived from one of these or some other similar notion. The deriva- 
tion of the Indian " Hants" and the Greek Xctptres from this root (Id. n. 369) 
seems to me very probable. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET, 61 

Sanskrit hari, Greek ^Xa>p6?, Latin hel-vus, O.H.G. groni, 
our "green 1 ." 

Our ancestors would seem to have been troubled by- 
snakes : they had formed from the root AGH to "choke" 
the noun aghi to denote the reptile 2 . This appears in 
Sanskrit as ahi, in Greek as e%*-s, Latin angui-s (where the 
radical AGH has, as always in Latin, been strengthened by 
the nasal; compare angor, angustus, anxrius, &c), and Lith. 
angi-s. The O.H.G. unc, an "adder" does not shew the 
same suffix ; e^-oVa has sunk to the latter signification : 
and eyxeXv? an "eel" apparently reminded the Greeks of 
the original snake, but as we know from Aristophanes 
carried also with it more pleasant associations. 



DH. 

(Indo-Eur. DH=$k. dh=Gr. 0=Lat. /(initial), d (medial) 
= Goth, d = O.H.G. t = Lith. d.) 

This letter is found in many rather curious and interesting 
roots. One of these is DHA to "milk" — to be distinguished 
from the same combination of sound which means to "place," 
and becomes in Greek the important root ©E. Of course 
it is quite possible that the idea to " milk " may have been 
expressed simply by saying "to place to the breast:" but 
this is quite uncertain ; the two ideas may have been 
originally represented by very different combinations of 
sound which at a time beyond the reach of our investigation, 
and by the operation of laws which we cannot discover, 
became identical. At all events for etymological purposes 
they are practically distinct roots : the derivatives of the one 
must be kept distinct from the derivatives of the other. 
In Greek DHA " to milk " is always found with vowel long, 

1 Or. Et. V . 184. 2 Id. p. 170. 



62 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

agreeing in the main with Sanskrit in this respect. Thus it 
occurs in the rare verb OfjaOac (e.g. Od. iv. 89), and in the 
same neuter sense as it has in Sanskrit : but in one of the 
Homeric Hymns (Ap. 123) it has the active sense which I 
imagine to have originally belonged to the root — ov$ ap 
5 'A7r6W(ova yjpvcraopa drjaaro p<r)Tr]p. The nouns formed in 
Greek from the root are numerous, as Orfkr], Orfkvs, Ti-Or/vy 
&c, and probably also the proper name Tr)-6v<;. In Latin it 
is not quite certain whether filius should be attributed to 
this root, or to BHU (Lat. FIT) to "be," because the Latin 
confusedly represents both the dental and labial aspirate at the 
beginning of a word by/: the former view is taken by Curtius 1 , 
the latter by Corssen 2 : and there is the same uncertainty 
about femina. But the root has certainly its Latin repre- 
sentative in felo to "suck." In Gothic we find daddjan "to 
give milk" in Mark xiii. 17 : and tdu with the same sense 
in O.H.G. Curiously Sanskrit seems to be the only language 
which has applied this root to denote a cow — dhenu — obvious 
as the application might seem. 

A rather obscure Greek root ©A F to " stare," or " wonder 
at," is liable to be confused with the last in consequence of 
the loss of the final v. It does not seem to occur in any 
other language except in the Sclavonic branch 3 , nor is the 
verb found in Ionic Greek, except perhaps in Od. xviii. 191 — 
afjbfipoTa Bwpa StSov ha jjliv Orja-alar ^ kyaioi — where Bekker's 
emendation OeaaaiaTo (quoted by Curtius, I.e.) seems 
probable. But in Doric Greek the verb occurs frequently : 
OacrOe Ta? anriGTias; says the Megarian (Ar. Ach. 770), and in 
Theokritus the word is used for going to some sight or show 
(ii. 72, xv. 23), and Oaaat, means simply "look !" (i. 149), by 
the process of weakening mentioned above, by which a 
general idea is substituted for one more vivid and more 

1 G'r. Et. 227. 2 Kritischc Beitrage, 188. 

:$ Gr. Et. 228. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 63 

restricted — a process found, I think, more among the less 
quick-witted Dorians than among the other Greeks : thus in 
Theokritus epireiv (Indo-Eur. SARP to creep) means simply 
to go (vii. 2, xv. 26, &c). The nouns however derived from 
this root are not restricted to Doric, as Oavfia (for OaF-fia), 
6ea (for def-a). Oa/Jiftos and T607j7ra, which seem naturally 
to belong to this family, are probably better referred to 
STAMBH already mentioned : just as stupeo with the same 
meaning as reQ^ira is referrible to the cognate root STAP 1 . 

The derivatives of the root DHU to "shake" or "move 
quickly," retain the original meaning with curiously different 
results. In Sanskrit from the lengthened form DHU we 
have dhuma " smoke" and dhuli "dust." In Greek ©T gives 
us Oveiv, in Homer of rushing winds and streams — the aW/zo? 
avv XaikaiTL Ovwv, or Skamandros ocSfiaro Ovcov, but the 
same verb was at the same time used of "burning" — apparently 
"blowing the fire" is the connecting link — and in post- 
Homeric times Oveiv is regularly used of a sacrificing." But 
the noun 6v[x6^ seems from the earliest traceable times to 
have been confined to the movement of the soul : whilst 
OveWa remained fixed to the earliest sense 2 ; and 0vo$ was 
attached to the derived idea of sacrifice. In Latin fumus, 
O.H.G. toum, Sclav, dymu and our " dust " is still retained 
for the primary sensuous idea of agitation. But the Sclavonic 
has followed in the wake of the Greek by expressing the 
soul by dusa; and the Lithuanian duma denotes both 
thought and soul 3 . 

1 Gr. Et. 198. 

2 Mr Paley (note to II. xii. 253) connects OveXXa and Oveiv in the sense of 
motion with Oelv to run and Boos, and derives them all from Oe F- But surely 
this is impossible. From 0eF we can get only Oefu or Ota, not Ovw. What 
analogy is there for such a formation? It is of course possible that there 
may have been two distinct roots, one "to rush," and one " to burn." But 
the ultimate Greek form of each must have been 0T. 

3 Gr. Et. 234. M. Miiller, 11. 210. 



64 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

Perhaps no Indo-European noun has preserved its form 
so perfectly during all its wanderings as madhu. It is the 
Sanskrit madhu, meaning first "honey," then "a spirituous 
liquor extracted from the blossoms of the Bassia latifolia," 
according to Prof. Benfey's Sanskrit dictionary : in Greek it 
is fieOv, with no meaning but wine. The O.H.G. is metu, 
and the old Saxon medo — our "mead." The Sclav, medu 
and Lith. midus seem not to have passed beyond the signi- 
fication of honey 1 . Prof. Curtius takes the primary meaning 
to have been — a sweet drink. It seems to me more likely 
that the primary meaning was " honey," and that the North- 
Western peoples parted from the common stock before the 
word had got any other meaning ; the invention of mead being 
thus left to our Teutonic forefathers' unaided ingenuity. The 
word reached its next stage of a sweet, and then intoxicating 
drink before the separation of the Aryan and South Euro- 
pean peoples : and never passed beyond this stage in India, 
a country where the palm supplies most of the spirituous 
liquor consumed and where grapes are grown only as a 
garden fruit 2 . But in Greece, a vine-growing country, the 
signification " wine " once attained, had driven out all others 
before the days of Homer. 



BH. 

(Indo-Eur. £# = Sk. bh=Gk. $ = Lat./ (initial), b (medial) 
= Goth, b = O.H.G. &, p = Lith. b.) 

Considering the fact above mentioned that B is found in 
no certain Indo-European root, it is certainly not a little 
surprising that BH is found in some of the most common, 
such as BHA "to give light" (the lengthened forms of which 
have been already mentioned), BHU "to be," and BHAR 

1 Gr. Et. 234. 2 Elphinstone's India, Vol. i. pp. 10, 14. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 65 

"to bear." The derivatives of BHU are too well known 
and have varied too little from the radical idea to need 
much description. The derivatives of BHAR are very 
different in the different languages. Thus while in San- 
skrit the primary idea of bearing has passed in the main 
part of the derivatives into that of "supporting" and 
"nourishing;" and while in Gothic hair an has the secondary 
sense of " bearing children " — compare the Scotch " bairn ;" — 
in Greek there is no important variant from the simplest 
sense of carrying except cfrcpos " tribute." In Latin on the 
contrary the root has been very prolific : beside fer-ax and 
fer-tilis we have probably far " corn," and fors, for-tuna &c. 
that which brings 'our luck to us 1 . 

An interesting root is ARBH " to be active:" it appears in 
Sanskrit as RABH which has commonly the sense of 
desiring ; but its most frequent compound sam-d-rabh signi- 
fies to "undertake." It appears as AA<3>, to "bring in" or 
"yield" in the Homeric covov akfyelv and in the much dis- 
cussed avhpes dkfaa-Tal, probably " active, enterprising men." 
In Latin we have labor and all its derivatives : in Gothic 
arbaiths in the same sense, the modern German arbeit : and 
the Sclavonian rabu is a " servant 2 ." 

While we find little agreement among the different 
peoples in the terms by which they denote the sun, moon, 
and heaven — a fact which perhaps may point out to us that 
the Indo-Europeans lived in a country where man was to a 
great extent independent of the atmospheric conditions, 
and not subdued by them, — yet they all agree in their 
name for the cloud. The Sanskrit nabhas is the Greek 
vecpo? : the Latin nubes, and nebula, and the German 
nebel are cognate formations : and the Sclavonic nebo is 
the sky 3 . This agreement is curious, and rather difficult to 
explain. 

1 Gr. Ft. 270. 2 Gr. Ft. 263. s Gr. Ft. 265. 

P. L. 5 



66 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

In the Indo-European bhratar, brother, found with slight 
difference in all the peoples, we see that the suffix -tar — 
found in the Greek -rep or -rop and the Latin -tor — was used 
before the separation to denote relationship. It is not very 
easy to see the connection between this use of it and the 
other more common one to mark the agent. Whether there 
were originally two distinct forms which by phonetic 
influence were confused together ; or whether -tar first 
denoted the agent, and the different domestic relations were 
first conceived of as the performance of certain functions (so 
that bhratar meant originally the bearer or supporter, patar 
the protector, matar the producer) — is impossible for us to 
decide. One objection to the latter view lies in the some- 
what artificial character of the derivations here given ; the 
conceptions seem on the whole so little obvious or simple. 
No doubt there may have been originally a score of other 
words besides patar by which a father could be known, arid 
patar may have driven them all out of the field by virtue of 
no superior merit as a conception, but from greater conve- 
nience of sound, or even some other more trifling reasons : 
such an elimination only requires time : and long time must 
have elapsed between the simple beginnings of primitive 
man upon the earth and the stage of development which the 
Indo-Europeans had attained when they first appear in that 
dim Eastern dawn of what is to us the world's history : and 
therefore the charge of artificiality against these derivations 
{Possibility should go for no more than it is worth. Yet I confess I can- 
our words n °t nei P suspecting that these words, patar and matar, 
being older d eno ting as they do one of the simplest and earliest relation- 
Mo- ships, may possibly have been a legacy received from a still 
more distant time, remnants of an utterly perished language, 
brought down in some simpler form, and afterwards fashion- 
ed by our forefathers, so as to lose what was strange in their 
appearance, and be capable of being referred to a known 



European 
roots) 






IV.] THE . INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 67 

Indo-European root and suffix. Certainly the first syllable 
of each word seems marvellously like the language of 
nature. 

I have thus given examples of the nine momentary 11. Pro- 
sounds as they occur, in roots and words presumably Indo- ^ n ^ s 
European. The protracted sounds, which we now proceed 
to consider, require less strength and distinctness in articu- 
lation. Hence they occur less frequently in roots than the 
strong explosive sounds which were better fitted to express 
with firmness and precision the ideas produced by natural 
objects through the senses upon the mind of a quick and 
vigorous race. I shall begin with the nasals, because they t. Nasals. 
have a close and obvious connection with the momentary 
sounds : they were commonly produced, perhaps at first 
always, in contact with one of those sounds : afterwards they 
acquired an independent existence. A nasal is produced to- 
gether with one of the " checks" by simply diverting a portion 
of the current of air through the nose, and the sound so pro- 
duced will vary according as the accompanying consonantal 
check is guttural, dental, or labial : in Sanskrit, which pos- 
sesses two additional classes of consonants, the palatal and 
lingua], sounded between the guttural and the dental, each 
of these classes has its own nasal, distinguished like the 
other nasals by its own peculiar symbol. Sanskrit has thus 
five nasal letters, while no European language has more than 
two, though many have at least a distinct sound, like that of 
rig at the end of English " sing," to express a guttural nasal. 
The question has already been mentioned whether this gut- 
tural nasal-sound is Indo-European. Certainly that language 
possessed no special symbol for it : and there is no evidence 
that it could ever stand alone in any ancient language but 
Sanskrit : in all the others it is only found in contact with the 
guttural which produced it, as in cvyxovrj, angustus. These two 

5—2 



6S THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

words together with the Gothic aggvus 1 also meaning "narrow" 
and derived from the same root as the others, might seem to 
justify us in assuming an Indo-European root ang (where 
by n I denote the sound ng). But no stronger form is found 
in Sanskrit than agha, in the sense of " evil : " and the Greek 
also has' the simpler form AX, axos : a later origin must 
therefore be attributed to the nasal, in this and in similar 
cases. The most that we can infer is that the sound was be- 
coming recognised before the separation of languages but not 
yet so fully as to require a definite symbol. 

The dental and labial nasals are found unaltered in all 
the languages. The only variety we find is in the Greek, 
Gothic, and Lithuanian, which take n at the end of a word 
where the other languages have m. The reason is obvious : 
m which is pronounced with the lips firmly closed, requires 
greater tension of the vocal mechanism than n, and therefore 
was superseded by it. 

N. 

From AN, "to blow," we have an-ila in Sanskrit and 
civ-epos in Greek meaning " wind." Transferred to the spi- 
ritual world the Grseco-Italian anemos becomes animus, the 
spirit, in Latin. The 0. H. G. unst 2 is the violent wind, 
while ansts in Gothic denotes favour or grace : so curious is 
the interlacing of the physical and metaphysical in the deri- 
vatives of this root. In Sanskrit dnana is the mouth, and 
then like os passes into the signification "face:" and most 
probably the same meaning is found in irpoa-7jvrj%, with face 
turned towards one, air^vr}^, with averted face, irprjvi]^, with 
face bent forward, vTrrjvr), the part below the mouth. These 

1 The symbol g, k> denote the nasal, was of course borrowed from the 
Greek. 

2 Gr. Et. 275. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 69 

etymologies are due to Prof. Benfey, who also connects prdna, 
which in Sanskrit signifies both breath and life, with the 
Greek cfepr/v and cfrpcvris. 

The severity of the winter in the original home of the 
Indo-European nations is shewn by their all having the same 
word for snow : except indeed the Hindu. The original root 
was SNIGH, which is retained in Sanskrit in the form SNIII, 
but it denotes viscosity, and the derivative sneha means first 
* oil," then " love." The Zend however has the root in its 
old sense : in Greek the guttural has passed into a labial, and 
we have vl<j>a<; &c. : in Latin ning-ere, the first consonant 
being lost as often in Latin : the Gothic for "snow" is snaivs, 
the Lithuanian snegas. The fact that the Indians alone 
allowed the word to pass out of its original sense shews that 
they passed into a climate the most unlike to that of the 
common father land. Their common word for snow is hima, 
whence Himalaya, the place where the snow lies : it comes 
from the root GHI, which has given the other languages their 
word for winter, ^evixwv, hiemps, Lithuanian zema: the 
fact that hima was used by the Hindus to denote a number 
of other objects remarkable for whiteness and freshness — 
such as camphor, the pearl, the white lotus, and fresh butter x 
— may shew that snow was to them an object to be admired 
from a distance rather than an inconvenience under foot. 
Some general inferences about the climate of our father- 
land will be found in a note at the end of this Lecture. 

The agreement in the word for a daughter-in-law is curi- 
ous. The Sk. snusha, Gr. vv6<>, Lat. nurus, and 0. H. G. snur, 
and Sclav. snocJid 2 , point to the Indo-European form snusa: 
which may not unlikely have originally been sunu-sa, a de- 
rivative from sunu, "a son" (which is a Sanskrit form from SU, 
"to beget ;" whence mc? = su-yo-s). Indeed the fixity of the 
less necessary terms connected with marriage shew the firm 

1 Beiif. Lex. h.v. a Gr. Et. 286. 



yo THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

establishment of the custom among the primitive race. Thus 
the father- and mother-in-law, the brother- and sister-in-law 
all appear in the Indo-European vocabulary. On this sub- 
ject see Pictet, Origines Indo-Europeennes, Vol. u. 331 — 375: 
a book which contains many interesting deductions respect- 
ing the physical and moral stand-point of our forefathers, 
with some rather rash derivations. 



M. 



The labial-nasal is found in the root MAR, which with 
its strengthened forms MARD, and MARP — if this latter 
be really connected with it — is well known from the full 
and interesting discussion it has received from Max Miiller in 
his second series of lectures. It appears most commonly in 
Greek and Latin as MOB (or MPO in Greek as cl-ijl{I3)po-to<;), 
and mostly restricted to the sense of death. Our " murder" 
is to be seen in the Gothic maurthr. 

One of the most important roots in the language is MAN, 
" to thiDk." This root indeed, as we have already seen, is 
only a secondary, modified form of MA, to measure (whence 
comes ma-ta which the Sanskrit grammars give as the past 
participle of man, and ma-ti " thought") : but it is undoubt- 
edly older than the time of the separation. In the Sanskrit 
and in all the North European languages, the derivatives of 
this verb signify nothing but operations of the mind, as 
thought and memory : in old German minna is " love," 
whence the minne-singers. But in Latin the root is applied 
in its simplest form — man-ere — and in Greek almost its sim- 
plest — iikv-eiv — to express what is apparently a much more 
concrete idea, " to remain." Which is the primary sense ? 
It has already been incidentally mentioned that the concrete 
signification of a verb or noun as a rule always precedes the 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 71 

abstract : for example, YAR meant to " look carefully," before 
Gcpa (strengthened derivative from Fop, whence op-aw) meant 
tl caution," "anxiety;" or ver-eor meant "to be afraid." Has 
then this root reversed the ordinary process ? The fact that 
no trace is left in the Teutonic and Sclavonic speeches of any 
original sense " to remain," is strongly against that having 
been the primary sense of the root. Probably no root has 
ever passed from a particular to a general signification with- 
out leaving some trace behind in some of its derivatives of 
its original meaning. How then can we explain this excep- 
tion to the rule ? According to Prof. Curtius 1 , the root start- 
ing with the idea of "thought" took three main directions : 
(1) active, yearning thought, as seen in the Homeric ^e-jbuov-a, 
and also in fievos, which at first was active purpose of the 
soul — the {laws /cal 6vp.6s of the Homeric heroes — and then 
by association passed into the idea of bodily strength : and the 
coguate /naio/mai (= /Ma-yo-fiac) has the same meaning. (2) 
excited thought'; whence fiatvopbai, firjv^ and fidvris, all de- 
noting the carrying a man out of himself by power of thought ; 
and here, on this theory, come /uuevco and man-eo, when a 
roan is so filled with thought that he stands stock-still. (3) 
backward thought, remembering and admonishing, whence 
the proper name Mev-rcop, "the adviser," Movaa (i.e. Mov-cra, 
"the teacher") ; and the numerous list of Latin derivatives, 
men-tio, mon-eo, mons-tram (for mon-es-trum, the " warning"), 
reminiscor and many others. In mentiri and mendax 2 the 
idea has received a twist. This explanation seems to me the 
best that can be given of the inversion of the general rule. 
Prof. Curtius explains in the same way the parallel case of 
the Latin mora, "delay," which stands alone as a concrete 
noun among the numerous abstract derivatives from SMAR, 



1 Gr. Et. 280; see also p. 96. 

' 2 On the form of this word, see Corssen, Krhtisclw Beitrdge, 118. 



72 THE TNBO-EL T RO?EAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

"to remember," the Greek MEP in /juep-Lfiva, &c, Lat. MOB 
in memoria. 

The nasals have played a very prominent part in the for- 
(Composi- mation of suffixes. Prof. Schleicher 1 gives a list of about 
Indo- twenty-five simple suffixes the majority of which can be 
E uMx-s^ n ta* ace d by comparison through the different languages up to 
Indo-European days. Of these three consist of the simple 
vowels a, i, u, with no consonant at all. Out of the remain- 
ing twenty -two, a nasal is found in eleven ;. and curiously 
enough the dental t is found in no less than nine. In four 
the spirants are found, and all the remaining letters of the 
alphabet in only four others. This would seem to shew a 
facility of the t sound which we should not have looked for : 
since undoubtedly these suffixes must have been selected out 
of many other competitors to fill their post because of some 
proved lightness and convenience of sound found in them, 
more than in any other part of the mechanism of language. 
It is possible that one cause may have been the possibility of 
slurring the t sound by turning the tip of the tongue slightly 
backward against the roof of the mouth instead of pressing 
it firmly against the teeth : a pronunciation which we may 
suppose to have prevailed both in Greece and Italy, from the 
fact that the dentals in Greek and Latin have been much 
more corrupted than either of the other classes, neither of 
which admit of any looseness and uncertainty as to the point 
of contact. This looser pronunciation is also common in 
England : and in Sanskrit, as is well known, there existed a 
separate class of letters, called Unguals or cerebrals, which in 
the modern languages of India have almost superseded the 
dentals, and which are said to be pronounced like our Eng- 
lish t and d, not as full dental checks. 

The preponderance of nasals in these suffixes is not sur- 
prising; they can be pronounced clearly with less effort 
1 Comp. p. 374, (fee. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 73 

than any other sound except r and I. Hence we have in fre- 
quent cases the suffixes -ma, -man, and even -mant : the 
last is probably to be assumed e.g. from the identical San- 
skrit naman (for gna-man, a " name"), Lat. no-men, Goth. 
namin, and even the corrupt Sclavonic i-me, where the mark 
under the e denotes a lost nasal. So far we have only evi- 
dence for a termination -man : but the Greek form is 6vo-/juar- : 
and as neither t nor n is likely to have passed into the other, 
we conclude that the original form was gndmant, and that 
the heavy termination was lightened in different ways ac- 
cording to the genius of the different languages. We may 
compare the closely analogous termination -vant, which is 
found in the Greek ; e. g. ya? l ~^ evT ' There is no slight con- 
test respecting these suffixes : Prof. Benfey considering them 
to be all corruptions of an original -mant or -vant, which he 
regards as the participial termination \ so that nouns were 
originally participles : a theory which seems supported by such 
corruptions as those given above, and in which the chief 
difficulty is to conceive what this -mant or -vant originally 
was. The other and more generally accepted theory — held 
by Curtius and Schleicher amongst others — is that the shorter 
forms, -ma, -na, -ta } &c. are the elder, and that the longer 
forms are combinations of these, with the loss of some of the 
vowels. I incline to the latter view, as far as regards the 
first origin of these suffixes ; but as we find them in the his- 
tory of language I have little doubt that they are commonly 
corruptions ; the process of degradation having succeeded to 
that of composition. 

We now come to the spirants, or breaths, — Y, S, V. These 2. Spirants. 
make up but a small portion of the lists of breaths as found 
in the physiological alphabet given by Prof. Max Muller 1 : 
but they are all of which there is any trace in the primitive 
language; the full table having been constructed from the 

1 Lect. 11. 152. 



74 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

different weakenings of stronger sounds in different lan- 
guages, and not found completely in any known speech. Of 
these three, y and v are soft or sonant letters, the first pala- 
tal, the second labial: s is a hard dental. They have been 
retained uncorrupted in Sanskrit, and nearly so in the North- 
European languages: it is in the Zend, which however does 
not concern us, and in Greek and Latin (especially the former) 
that they have suffered most. Since therefore a full list of 
these variations must be given in their proper place, I shall 
give but few examples here of these sounds in primitive roots 
and words: just enough to shew that there really were such 
sounds as y and v, which would be a matter of great doubt 
to any mere Greek scholar from the absolute loss of the first 
letter, and slight traces left of the latter in the earliest stage 
of Greek. I must premise that the symbol Y will here 
denote the sound which in all German philological works 
is represented by J, except when I am quoting Teutonic or 
Sclavonic words, where I am bound to adhere to the spelling 
of those languages. In writing Latin words I denote the 
sound y by the symbol i, as the Italians themselves did; not 
by J as in the older editions of Latin authors in this country. 
My reason for this is that the sound of our English y cor- 
responds to the sound of the original letter, and therefore 
I thought it better to use it in a book intended for English 
readers. I have used the symbol J which was thus left 
unemployed (except in the Teutonic words aforesaid) to 
denote the Sanskrit j sound, as is done in all Sanskrit gram- 
mars for English students, while German writers use the 
symbol*/ (and U for ch) — a practice which certainly keeps 
before the reader the origin of these palatal letters, but is 
somewhat inconvenient aod unsightly. I must therefore ask 
you to remember that the Indo-European root YUG, the 
Latin iug-um, and the Gothic JUK all begin with the same 
sound, our English y. 



IV.J THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 75 



(Indo-Eur. F=Sk. y=Gr. l, e, £ Q=Lat. i'=j in all the 
other members of the family, the sound however being the 
same.) 

The root YUG has given the common term for the 
"yoke" to all languages. It is the Sanskrit yuga-m — which 
however denotes more frequently a pair, or couple; the 
Greek tyyov, Lat. iug-um, Gothic juk, 0. H. G. joch, Lithu- 
anian j unga-s. There can be no doubt of the employment 
of the Indo-Europeaus as an agricultural people before the 
separation. The same root gave the Latins their term for a 
wife — con-iux — compare the Greek 6/zo-£vf, the acre, jugerum, 
and superlative iuxta, i. e. iug-i-sta, as Corssen ingeniously 
explains it 1 , comparing e.r£a=ec-i-sta. 

The pronominal stem "who" was formed in Indo-Euro- 
pean by this letter ya-s. Perhaps, as Curtius suggests 2 , this 
stem itself was a secondary form derived from the simplest 
denominative stem i = " that," Latin is, by the affix a, the 
radical vowel passing before it into the semi-vowel — this 
conjecture derives support from the Gothic method of form- 
ing the relative by adding ei to the demonstrative pronoun : 
thus thata + ei or thatei is " who." The Sanskrit has kept 
this pronoun unchanged: the Greeks suffered the spirant to 
sink into the spiritus asper — 0-?. The Gothic, though form- 
ing its relative by a different rule, seems yet to have kept a 
trace of the old form in jabai= i '\i\ whilst the Sclavonic 
has the form pretty accurately — ji-s — but transferred it to 
the demonstrative. This variety of usage may shew that 
this secondary pronoun (if Prof. Curtius' hypothesis be true) 
existed indeed before the separation of the North- Western 
peoples, but had not yet clearly separated itself in meaning 

1 Ausspr. 11. 26. ' z Gr. Et. 3.: 5. 



y6 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

from the demonstrative: and that the superior logic of the 
remaining peoples first gave it its distinct restricted mean- 
ing. In Greek the consciousness of this y remained till the 
days of Homer — as we find in the Iliad lines ending with 
Oeos OJ9, &c, where the apparent irregularity is often ex- 
plained by a. supposed digamma: in truth it probably was 
no irregularity at the time when the line was first recited, 
but the sound of the y was still slightly heard. This w? 
was the ablative case of 6-?, and equivalent to the Sanskrit 
ydt, final r in Greek always passing into a: just as by the 
same loss of the y, ydvat = " how much," is found in Greek 
in the very dissimilar form a- Fo?, Attic S09. 

The most frequent traces of this spirant are /to be found 
in formative and case-suffixes. Thus the original comparative 
suffix -yans — probably once -yard, can be traced through 
the Sanskrit, e.g. hhu-yams — more ; the Greek -iov, as tca/c- 
tov, though often much hidden by assimilation, of which 
more hereafter; -ior, earlier -ios, as maior, for mag-ior; and 
even the Gothic is =jas by a phonetic rule of the language 
(i=ja*). 



(Indo-Eur. #=Sk. s, sh = Gr. cr, (') = Lat. s, r = Goth. 
s, z = O. H. G. s, r = Lith. s.) 

S is preserved in every language in some of the forms 
derived from AS to " be." In Sanskrit we have the primi- 
tive form: in Greek and Latin it appears as ES, (e)s-um: in 
Gothic the original vowel is seen as i, and this language 
also (like Latin and Greek) has corrupted the first person into 
im, but kept the s in the third person ist. The Lithuanian 
which has preserved the conjugational suffixes with remark- 
able accuracy still exhibits es-mi and es-ti. The root no 



Schleicher, Comp. 479—484. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN- ALPHABET. 77 

doubt meant originally to "breathe/' though perhaps no 
language but the Sanskrit has any derivative bearing that 
sense 1 . The root was used in Sanskrit and in Greek to 
express moral ideas : thus (a)sat the participle signifies " true" 
(really existing) and "good;" and to the same process is 
probably due the same sense of the Homeric evs (for ia-v-s, 
the suffix being different), and the common ev, "well." The 
correspondence of form and sense between eV-eo? and sat-ya-s 
points strongly to their common derivation from this root 2 . 

The roots for sewing and spinning — SIV and NADH — 
(as Mommsen has pointed out 3 ) are alike in all Indo-Euro- 
pean languages; though at the same time he denies to our 
forefathers the further accomplishment of weaving. The 
former — SIV — is not indeed very recognisable in Greek. 
Both in Greek and Latin the i has been lost, because the v 
was resolved into the vowel u (Latin sii-o, sutor, &c), and 
therefore one of the two vowels was obliged to fall out; and 
the root is then probably to be found in Kaaavco = Kara-crv-ay, 
which is restricted however to the cobbler's stitch. 

In the greater number of roots however the s must be 
inferred by the classical scholar chiefly from the kindred lan- 
guages, as it commonly drops out altogether between two 
vowels in Greek, and in Latin under similar circumstances 
passes into r. Thus the root US " to burn " is authenticated 
by the Sanskrit and Zend USH, and Latin US in us-tum. 
But no nearer forms occur in Greek than the Homeric evw 
(for evaco) "to singe pigs," and avco "to dry," whence avo<; and 
au^yLto?. If, as Prof. Curtius thinks 4 , the root points back to 
an older form VAS, it may be better to connect with it, as 
he does, the name Hestia — Vesta — almost the only divinity 
not Indo-European 5 , yet from the first common to both the 
Greek and Italian nations — rather than with VAS to " dwell," 

1 See M. Miiller, Led. 11. 249. 2 Gr. Et. 337. ■ Hist. Borne, 1. 17. 
4 Gr. Et. 356. 6 Mommsen, Hist. Home. 1. 21. 



yS THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

the root which gave the Greek Facrrv, and the Latin verna, 
the house-born slave. The hot wind, Eupo?, and Auster, 
are clearly from this root: the different forms which the 
vowel has taken will be discussed in the lecture on vowel- 
intensification. Curtius also connects ^eXto? with the same 
root 1 , making the original form of the word av{p-)ekto<;\ then 
the v either fell out altogether, as in the common Greek 
aeXios, or hardened itself into /3 as in the Cretan a/3e)uo?. 
If this be so, as seems in the highest degree probable, there 
can be no hesitation in identifying with this Greek avaeXios, 
the Latin proper name Aurelius, the older form of which 
was Auselius; and very curious in this connection is the old 
legend respecting the Aurelian family, that they were de- 
scended from the sun 2 . The last Grseco-Italian word con- 
nected with this root is Ausos, " the morning " — which became 
on the one side the iEolic atf©?, Doric dax;, Ionic rj<h<; and 
Attic eo)? — where the rough breathing seems to be due, as 
often, to Athenian Cockneydom; — on the other side, by the 
addition of a secondary suffix, the Latin Ausos-a or Aurora. 
It is a little curious how useless this root remained to the 
other peoples considering its fertility among the Graeco- 
Italian race; the only exception being indeed that the 
Hindus also express the morning by a derivative of the root 
Ushas, but as there is no vowel modification, this word must 
be kept distinct from the Grseco-Italian form: and the Ger- 
man Oest, and the " East " are no doubt derivatives denoting 
the morning-land 3 . 

V. 

(Indo-Eur. F=Sk. v = Gr. v, F, ( r ) = Lat. u = v in all 
others.) 

Two roots, YAS to "dwell" and to "burn," have been 
already mentioned. Another root of the same form signifies 

1 Gr. Et. 357. 2 Paul. Epit. 23, quoted by Curtius. 3 Gr. Et. 358. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 79 

to " clothe." I say another, because although of course it is 
possible to conceive that one of these significations was 
developed from another, e.g. that to dwell and to clothe, are 
both modifications of an earlier sense to "cover;" yet it 
seems to me, as I have already often said, more probable 
that the roots were originally diverse, and came into their 
present common form in times which elude our analysis: at 
any rate they are distinct roots for us, and their derivatives 
must be kept distinct. This VAS "to clothe" produced nu- 
merous Sanskrit words for clothing: it gave the Gothic 
vas-ti, "a vest:" it has the Graeco-Italian form VES: which 
produced ves-tis and Fecrtf???; and is hardly distinguishable in 
ev-vvjju, for ^ea-vv-yn, where the a has been assimilated, or 
in the Homeric iavo? (Jecr-avo-), where it is totally lost. 
Curtius l connects with the same root the similar word kdvos, 
which as Buttmann has shewn 2 , is regularly used in Homer 
as the epithet of a garment, and with the penultima long. 
Buttmann does not suggest any derivation, but wishes (I 
think justly) to separate the word from evvvyn and eavos, 
on the ground of the insufficiency of meaning in such phrases 
as 7re7rXo? eavos, where some more distinctive epithet is to be 
expected. May the word have meant " woven," and been 
derived from a simpler form of the root which produced the 
German iveben, our "web"? That there must have once been 
a root without the final consonant seems proved by the 
Sanskrit VE "to weave," perhaps by the Latin vieo "to bind," 
or " hoop," together with its derivatives vitis, vimen, vitta, &c. 
The sense suggested would, I think, suit all the passages 
in Homer where the word occurs, except that in which it is 
the epithet of tin ; Tet)£e he ol fcvr)fj,lha<; eavov KaaoirepoLo 3 : 
but the word is there commonly translated " flexible," and 
this secondary sense might fairly be derived from the first. 

1 Qr. FA. 338. ' J Lexil. 238. 3 II. xviii. 613. 



80 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

The pastoral occupations of the Indo-Europeans are 
shewn — among many other indications by the perfect iden- 
tity in the different nations of the name for the sheep. The 
original avi is unchanged in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Gothic 
(for though the actual word does not occur in this last 
language, it is proved by the derivatives avethi, "a, flock/' and 
avistr, " a fold"). The Grseco-Italian ovis has been affected 
by the differentiation of original a, to be described here- 
after. Pictet suggests 1 the connection of the name with the 
root AY : which primarily meaning to give ear, attention — 
whence audio and very probably the Doric word alras, which 
gives name to the twelfth Idyll of Theokritus 2 — then in 
Sanskrit at least took a secondary sense of protecting : so 
that avi should mean the creature to be attended to, both 
from its weakness and its value. This of course amounts to 
no more than a plausible conjecture. 

The almost absolute loss of this spirant in Greek would 
make the identification of words of the same or similar 
meaning in Greek and Latin impossible but for the help 
of the cognate languages, especially the^ Sanskrit. Thus we 
should scarcely think of identifying to? with virus, did not 
the Sanskrit visha supply the missing link in the chain 
which leads us back with certainty to the form visa, which 
was in use before the separation of the three peoples, though 
as virus shews, not in any sense necessarily worse than an 
ill-tasting fluid. The Greek Zo?, the arrow, would seem to 
be due to the simple root I, from comparison with the San- 
skrit i-shu, which is formed with a different suffix. 

Lastly, v was useful in some formative and case-suffixes. 
Thus the form akva, " a horse," is visible in all the derived 
languages — hardly perhaps in ittttos, which is yet identical 
with akva, the labial spirant having assimilated the guttural 

1 Origines Ind.-Eur. i. 357. 2 Gr. Et. 346. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 81 

h into the labial p, which then in turn assimilated the s. 
Similarly the fuller forms -van and -vant existed in the 
Indo-European, parallel to -man and -rnant. The second 
-vant — corrupted to evr and or in the Greek — ^apt-Fe^T, and 
T€Tv<f)-foT : in Latin the change was even more complete, if 
Schleicher 1 is right in tracing the termination -oso in J rue- 
tuosus &c. from -vant or rather a secondary vant-a, which 
became by changes common enough in the Latin -vonso, 
-onso, -oso. 

Finally, we have the liquids to consider, R and L. I 3- Liquids. 
have already mentioned that there is some doubt whether L 
be as old as the days of the one common speech. R is a 
stronger sound, demanding a much more constrained posi- 
tion of the vocal mechanism than L ; it is produced farther 
back in the mouth, and we shall see afterwards that a conso- 
nant is stronger, the higher it is sounded in the air-tube : 
from which we must infer in any case where the age of the 
two letters is doubtful, that L is the younger sound. I may 
add the well-known fact that many children are unable to 
sound R, and substitute the easier sound L for it. And 
historical facts point to the same conclusion. L is much 
less frequent in Sanskrit than R, the Hindus having retained 
the R in many cases where in the European languages it 
has passed into L : thus the root of brightness and white- 
ness RUK, is still RUJ in Sanskrit, but LUK in Graeco- 
Italian — Xeu/eo? and luceo. Still I shall have some roots to 
mention below where L is found universally; and there is 
much reason for believing that the change had begun to 
operate even before the separation of the peoples, but not to 
any great extent, if we may judge from the proportion which 
L bears to R in Sanskrit, remembering that some at least 
of the L sounds must have arisen after the separation. I 

1 Comp. p. 403. 
P. L. 6 



82 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

shall take R, first, mentioning a few cases where it is found 
in all the different languages. 



R. 

The first and most obvious root with this letter is AR. 
This root 1 gives the Greek apoco, Latin arare, Gothic arjan, 
the old English " to ear," and Lithuanian arti — all meaning 
to plough. But this sense though universal in Europe did 
not belong to the Asiatic languages. In spite of the identity 
of sound, the Sanskrit ar-i-tra, does not correspond in mean- 
ing to dp-o-Tpo-, but to ip-er-fio- ; at least e/jer/xo? and Latin 
re-mus (for res-mus) mean the oar, while the Sanskrit noun 
denotes the rudder, which was no doubt originally only a large 
oar. It is of course conceivable that in Sanskrit also the 
Toot once meant to plough, and then ceasing to be used in 
its literal sense, signified only to plough the sea. But 
it seems more likely that the two ideas of ploughing and 
rowing are special applications of the more general idea 
of propelling. The Greeks and Latins were then enabled by 
their greater vowel range to distinguish these different ideas 
by different forms of the original root : the original form AR 
was retained to express ploughing : but as original A could 
be split up into a, e, and o, ER was taken to denote rowing. 
The same kind of differentiation is seen in the Lithuanian, 
which has irti to row, beside arti to plough. It is probably 
due to the half vowel-character of the sound r that the 
vowel appears after it in Latin remits and ratis: less differ- 
ence of sound was caused here by the transposition of the 
vowel than in the case of any other consonant ; the current 
of breath required, so to speak, to float the consonant, is so 
very small. Schleicher's hypothesis that this transposition is 

1 Gr. Et. 306. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 83 

generally permissible, that we may assume, e. g. a root KA as 
well as AK "to be sharp," seems to me doubtful 1 . The third 
form of the root is to be found in the Graeco-Italian OR " to 
be uplifted," in opcopa and orior. The identity of this root with 
the older AR is shewn by its occurrence in Sanskrit — weak- 
ened it is true in form to the single Sanskrit vowel ri : but 
such tenses as are formed directly from the root come from 
AR : still this slight difference of form served to keep the 
roots distinct. This root had also the L-form in Latin — 
ad-olesco, sub-ol-es &c. : perhaps also abolere, where the sense 
would be causal, to lift up and cast away. 

There are two other roots — identical in their Graeco- 
Italian form VER — " to speak," and " to look cautiously," 
which were once VAR, for that form is preserved in each case 
by the Gothic ; but the difference in meaning is strong against 
their identity. Neither of them occurs in Sanskrit ; a fact 
which is not surprising when w T e consider that VAR — the 
form under which each must have appeared — is already {Necessity 
engaged to express the three ideas of covering, surrounding °^^\ e . 
and choosing : all of which may possibly have come from one tween di f- 
sensuous idea, such as putting the hand on a thing; from which have 
which the first and third idea would naturally be derived, J^^T 6 
and the second may have been deduced from the first : but 
the ideas expressed by VER, which must in any case have 
been distinct from those expressed by VAR, were unable 
to maintain themselves under the same form as their stronger 
rival : the ideas therefore were expressed by other sounds, 
and these forms failed out of the language. The second root, 
" to look cautiously," became in Greek Fo/o, and therefore 
so far distinct from the first root : but both roots by 
the loss of the spirant became undistinguishable from the 
roots ER and OR already mentioned : and no further 

1 It has been assailed by Prof. Benfey (Gottingen Gel. Anzelgc for 1865, 
p. 1370). 

6—2 



84 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

vowel-change being possible, confusion was inevitable. Thus 
while we have from VER " to speak/' verbum in Latin, and 
vaurd in Gothic — our "word" — from the older form VAR, 
the Greek can shew us only ipelv and epeadai. Similarly 
VER " to look cautiously," the Latin vereor, from the older 
form of which we get our "ware" and "ward," in the newer 
Greek form appears only as op civ, and in several nouns, as 
wpa, ovpos a " watcher," and its compounds eTrlovpos, cppovpos 
and <j)povpa. 

Indeed a curious fatality seems to have brought together 
for the Greeks as many different ideas as possible under the 
same sound OR. The name for a mountain — Epos — has no 
certain congeners in other languages : but the Sanskrit giri, 
and the Sclavonic gora 1 , make it probable that the loss of 
initial g, which though rare yet does occur in Greek, has 
caused the confusion in form between this word and the 
derivatives of OR and VOR. Before the g entirely passed 
out of the Greek it probably was changed in one deriva- 
tive at least by means of a parasitic v to j3 : thus fiopeas 
"the north wind," would be the mountain-wind; and the 
Hyperboreans instead of being dwellers beyond the north- 
wind, would occupy a more conceivable position " beyond the 
mountains" — the natural dividers of mankind in early times. 
Again, opos "a boundary" — the Ionic ovpos-— is almost iden- 
tical in form with epos "a mountain" — for the rough breath- 
ing is perhaps only an Attic mispronunciation ; but the deri- 
vation of the word is very doubtful : if it be from the root 
SER "to draw" — whence eipay and aeipo, "a rope" — in the 
sense of a "line drawn" — compare the Latin ser-ies, "a row" 
— the breathing will then be the regular representative of 
the lost spirant. Lastly, opos, " whey," gives us a third iden- 
tical form ; where we know the missing letter to have been 

1 Or. Et. 312. 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 85 

s from the Latin serum: and the similarity of sense and 
sound leads at once to the Sanskrit sara: which is derived 
by the Indian grammarians from sri (SAR) "to go:" a 
somewhat inappropriate derivation, as Prof. Key has truly 
pointed out, for a word which denotes, besides whey, a pond 
and salt (a\?, sal, and solum) ; whilst sarit, said to come 
from the same root, means a river. Probably derivatives 
from different roots have been here confounded : and whilst 
sarit may be assigned to SAR "to go," epos and the rest 
may be better referred to another lost SAR, identical in 
form, but differing in sense ; but what that sense was, we 
cannot say. 

L. 

This letter suffers no regular change in the different lan- 
guages. In modern languages indeed it passes into r as easily 
as r into I. But in the early stage of language with which we 
are dealing, every I is presumedly weakened from older r. 
I have said before that it is much rarer in Sanskrit than in 
the European languages. I shall briefly give one or two 
examples where it occurs in Sanskrit also, in order to shew 
what claims it has to belong to the original alphabet. 

LAS 1 is found in the Sanskrit LAS to embrace and 
LASH to desire : in the Doric Xd-co to wish, where the <r 
has fallen out: in the common Greek Xrjfia, and Xi-Xa-L-oficu; 
probably also in Xiav; in las-civus ; and in Gothic lustus, 
desire, "lust." In the Bohemian dialect of the Sclavonic 
laska is love. In all these the connection of form and idea is 
sufficiently plain. 

Another root with a double form LIBH and LUBH, to 
desire, appears under the second form, with the derivative 
lobha covetousness. It is the rare Greek verb Xiirroiiai, 

1 Gr. Et. 324. 



86 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

whence XeXifjifievo? /u>axv$ used by Aeschylus in the Seven 
against Thebes (1. 380) ; the Latin has both forms lubet and 
libet, the former presumably the older, according to the scale 
of vowel-strength in that language: in Gothic Hubs is "love:" 
the O.H.G. has liuban to love, and that which man loves, 
lob, praise : the Lithuanian and Sclavonic present the root 
under the same form and with the same meaning as the 
German : and our own language gives us "lief," dear. 

In these and some other cases I is found universally. It 
is of course possible that the weakening may have taken 
place in Sanskrit and in the other languages separately. 
The independent action of the European and Asiatic families 
in this matter is shewn by the fact that sometimes though very 
rarely Sanskrit has I while the other languages have r : thus 
Sanskrit lup — Latin rup (in rumpo), 0. H. G. raubon, Gothic 
raupjan, the Scotch " roup " and our " rob." This certainly 
points to a later origin of the I : and on the whole, though I 
think there is much to be said in favour of its claim to Indo- 
European honours, yet the evidence seems to me not to 
prove more than its great antiquity. 

Concluding I have thus given examples of the occurrence of all the 
remarks. . 

certain consonants of the Indo-European alphabet, except B, 

in roots and words presumably Indo-European. These 

examples must have already made plain the existence of 

the three original vowels A, I, U. The vowels E and O 

have also occurred frequently in European derivatives : 

sometimes also in Sanskrit words, where however their 

position is quite different : they are there always long, and 

are the first intensified forms of the simple vow 7 els I and U 

respectively, corresponding to ai and au in the original 

language. In the other languages e and o, are, as has been 

already mentioned, weakened forms of A. I shall not here 

describe these vowel-changes further, and their effect on the 

different languages, in the way in which I have to some 



IV.] THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 87 

extent described some of the more remarkable consonantal 
changes in the languages of India and North Europe, 
because the investigation, if fully carried out, would lead us 
too far away from our subject. The vowels are the soul of a 
language : in the laws of their change the principles of 
growth of the whole language are involved. This will be seen 
in the examination of the vowel-laws of the Greek and Latin, 
to which we shall presently pass. 

The examples given above have been selected with the 
object of shewing as far as possible the Indo-European 
methods of forming secondary roots, and also nominal and 
verbal bases (or themes as they are sometimes called), by 
the addition to the root of formative suffixes, such as -tar, 
-ma, -man, -mant, -vant &c: by attaching one of these, e.g. 
-man, to a root, as gnd, we get gndman, a nominal base — 
that is a form which by the addition of a case-suffix be- 
comes a veritable word. I call -man a formative suffix in 
order to distinguish it from case-suffixes, e. g. -as of the 
genitive, -i of the locative, or personal-suffixes, as -mi, -si, 
-ti &c, which are attached to verbal bases, just as the case- 
suffixes to nominal bases. Many more examples of each kind 
might have been given ; as the formative suffix -ka (in Greek 
-a:o-?, Latin cu-s), which has been supposed, on account of the 
identity of sound, to be the pronoun ka already mentioned, 
but, as I think, on no sufficient ground ; the suffixes -ta and 
-na which are used, the former regularly, the later more 
rarely, to form the perfect participle of the passive : these 
are found so regularly in use among the different peoples that 
we must refer them all to a common origin. The same is 
true of the case-suffix -bhi, which is found in the Greek so- 
called adverbs vocrtyt,, l<f)i &c, the Latin tibi, and ibi, ubi &c. 
A full list of both classes of suffixes is given in Schleicher's 
Compendium; to give them here does not fall within the 
plan of these lectures, which deal in the main with the 



88 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. 

phonetic, not the formative part of language. But I have 
given these few instances to shew, as I said before, that 
there was a real Indo-European language, not a mere list of 
naked roots to which the name Indo-European has been 
given. The examples given suffice to shew that this 
language had reached the second stage of linguistic progress, 
that stage in which different relations were no longer ex- 
pressed, as in the Chinese, by adding to the root a new 
significant root. For this purpose suffixes were employed, 
syllables whose original meaning had passed away, which 
were therefore all the better qualified to meet the logical 
wants of a people which had attained to a very considerable 
degree of cultivation. 

Still more beyond my present scope is any description of 
the physical and moral development of our ancestors; except 
so far as any light has been thrown by the above examples 
on the conditions of place and climate under which they 
lived, on their domestic life, on their social institutions, and 
on their conceptions of an unseen world. Full information 
on all these points is to be obtained from Pictet's elaborate 
work already referred to, the Origines Indo-Europe'ennes : 
and the English reader may find a brief but excellent sketch 
in the second chapter of Mommsen's History of Rome, which 
is especially valuable to us because it not only describes the 
condition of the collective family, but also estimates the 
stage of development at which the Graeco-Italian race had 
arrived at the time when it had parted off from the Northern 
and Eastern peoples, but had not been broken up into the 
Hellenes and Italians. 



IV.] TEE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. 89 



NOTE ON LECTURE IV. 

I mentioned above that nearly all the nations agree in their 
term for snow. The examples of agreement in the words denoting 
cold might be considerably increased. The severity of the Indo- 
European winter, which is inferred from them, suits well with the 
country which has been assigned by conjecture to our forefathers ■ 
" central Bactria, the mountainous part extending from the Hindoo 
Koosh to the plain of the Oxus 1 ." This conjecture is confirmed 
by the fact that next to winter the most numerous analogies are 
to be found in the words for spring. One of the numerous 
Sanskrit names for spring is vasanta; the first part of this word 
is found in the Greek lap (for Fetr-ap), in the Latin ver (for veser), 
the Lithuanian was-ara (but meaning "summer"), the Sclavonian 
ves-na, and the Scandinavian vdr. This agreement is too great 
to be accidental; there can be no doubt that vasa or vasara was 
the name which the Indo-Europeans gave to the welcome spring 
which followed the five months winter of their high mountain 
home. Its meaning is very doubtful. There are three distinct 
roots of the same form, vas, which have been already mentioned ; 
but none gives a satisfactory meaning: the best perhaps is that 
which means "to clothe;" so that spring should be the re-clothing 
of Nature : but this may be thought fanciful. But in the names 
for summer we find hardly any agreement. Each nation had its own 
name. The Sanskrit ushma and Latin aestas are both the " burn- 
ing time," but from different roots : the Greek Oepos is from a differ- 
ent root again, and implies only warmth. The Irish sam or samh 
may be akin to the German Sommer, of uncertain derivation ; and 
these therefore have the best claim to having preserved the original 
term. This want of agreement is probably rightly explained by 
Pictet: in temperate climates summer is but a continuation of 
spring, and is less striking to the senses; hence the different 
peoples replaced the one primitive name — if indeed there were 
not already more than one in those early days — by distinct appel- 

1 Pictet, Orig. Indo-curop. 1. 97. 



9 THE INDO-EUROPEAN ALPHABET. [Lect. IV. 

lations of their own, suitable to the climate of their new abodes. 
Autumn offers us absolutely no analogies; it is not until the 
latest subdivision of the peoples that we find names for it occur- 
ring among these nations who required the term. For some never 
needed it, as the northern peoples: for them the old division 
sufficed, which separated distinctly only winter and spring, with 
summer considered as a continuation of the latter; the German 
peoples lost the old name for spring, and the Lithuanians, as 
we have seen, applied it to summer; both therefore parted with 
the old slight distinction. The Hindus strengthened it, and at 
an early period subdivided the three seasons, making them six, 
to suit the Indian climate and periodical rains ; while the Greeks 
and Romans found the want of a name to denote the " later 
season," but not till they had separated, when the Greeks called 
it by no more distinctive name, oV-wpa ; for practical purposes in 
their splendid climate finding it sufficient to divide the year into 
Oepos and xcljuuov; the Roman "auctuninus" was developed on 
Italian soil. 

As Pictet well points out 1 the Indo-European division of the 
year, besides corresponding well to their supposed country, also 
harmonises with what from other sources we know of their em- 
ployments. With a people mainly pastoral the second natural 
division of the year is the time of the return of the flocks for 
winter quarters. And when an agricultural succeeded to a pas- 
toral age, no further distinction was required because the grain 
is harvested in summer. A separate term for a fourth season 
does not become necessary until the time of the cultivation of 
fruit-trees, especially of the vine. 

1 Orig. 1. 107. 



LECTURE V. 



DYNAMIC CHANGE. 



We have now ascertained what were the sounds of the ori- Dynamic 
ginal language, which modified in different ways became the hriejly con- 
framework of the different languages of the Indo-European ^jj'ff *f- 
stock. We might therefore at once proceed to investigate tinguUh its 
the changes peculiar to the Graeco-Italian division — the those of 
main subject of these lectures. But at the risk of wearying ^ TO « & 
your patience, and exposing myself to the charge of incohe- 
rency, I shall ask you to allow me, before we pass to pho- 
netic, to set before you one or two examples of dynamic 
change. It is desirable to do so, because without knowing 
something of the operation of the formative principle in lan- 
guage, it is difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to 
keep its results distinct from the mere corruptions produced 
by the destructive principle. This confusion is only possible 
among the vowels ; the consonants are unaffected by dynamic 
change: and in languages where the vowel-system is almost 
perfect, where, first, the vowels in the main vary each in its 
own scale (so that, for example, from a root whose vowel is a, 
a derivative is rarely formed with the vowel i, as is the case 
e.g. where tWo? is formed from AK); and where, secondly, 



92 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

the diphthongs are preserved uninjured, so that the different 
steps of vowel modification can be kept distinct from each 
other — in such a language, I say (and such a language is the 
Greek) there is little fear of confusion. But this is far from 
being the case with the Latin. That has neither retained its 
diphthongs, nor kept the vowel-scales with anything like 
regularity. Therefore in treating of the most complex vowel- 
system of the Latiu I should be adding a new difficulty to 
those which are inevitable, if I did not give you some clue 
by which to distinguish between those variations which were 
primarily the result of design, and those which arose from 
indolence in articulation. I could not well do this till we 
had settled the stock of sounds with which we were to start : 
and it seems advisable to do it at this particular place, first, 
because the changes due to this principle are much fewer 
and simpler, and a knowledge of them will clear the way for 
the better understanding of the more complex problems of 
phonetic change; secondly, because the principle of growth 
must have originally preceded the principle of decay, in spite 
of the fact that in every speech amidst the greatest amount 
of corruption, new forms are still constantly produced by the 
inexhaustible vital force of language, nay often with vigour 
proportionate to the amount of loss to be supplied; yet still 
creation must have come first in order, and therefore it 
should naturally be considered first. Of course I do not pur- 
pose here to give any sketch of the general formative system 
of language — of the process by which a root grew into a 
base, and a base into a noun or verb. This growth is by ac- 
cretions from without, and is always easily distinguishable 
from the processes of phonetic change. What I wish to do is 
to describe some of the methods by which a root could be 
modified from within; not how e. g. the root III© could by 
adding a formative suffix become ttiQ-clvo- and iriOavo- grow 
into TTidavos and inOavoTr)? and Tndavoa) ; but how by mere 



V.] DYNAMIC CHANGE. 93 

modification of existing elements ttlQ could become ireid. 

Here without such knowledge confusion would be possible. 

Now the two principal methods of this modification of a The princi- 
pal methods 
root, without introducing any new element, are Reduplica- —Redupli- 

tion and Vowel-Intensification. At first sight it might ap- y owe i.j n . 

pear as though reduplication must be called an external mo- te / lsi J ica - 

r © r m tion: 

dification. Undoubtedly a further syllable is added to the 
word: but absolutely no new element is added: fxappualpco 
(which is for fiap-fiap-yco) introduces no new idea to modify 
the old one; the old one is but expressed twice over, till it 
gets a new association. Indeed vowel-intensification — the 
process by which ttiO becomes 7T€t0co — might more fairly seem 
to us the introduction of a new element, did we not remem- 
ber that e represents an original a, that is, that the seeming 
new element was at first but an addition of modified breath 
which gave a greater intensity to the radical vowel, when it 
came to be sounded at its proper place in the vocal tube. 

It is true that from the nature of Reduplication there is 
not much likelihood of its results being confused with those 
of phonetic change, except in the case of roots which begin 
with a vowel. But these two methods of strengthening the 
root are so closely connected, that it is hardly possible to 
treat of the one satisfactorily without the other. This is not 
the case with a third method, called nasalisation, by which possibly also 
e.g. FID became fi-n-d-o, and A A®, \a-v-0-av-(o. This va- %™ disa ~ 
riation of sound seems at first sight to bear so exact an ana- 
logy to the strengthening of the vowel already mentioned : 
e.g. as 7ri6 : ireiQ :: fid : find; and this use of the nasal is so 
exactly in accordance with the view given in the last lecture 
of its origin, that it was primarily a mere thickening of an- 
other sound, not itself a distinct sound, that it might seem 
that there need be no hesitation in adding nasalisation to 
the methods already mentioned of strengthening the simple 
root. But when we examine more closely we shall see so 



94. DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

much irregularity in the position of the nasal both in San- 
skrit, in Greek and in Latin, that we cannot help feeling 
some doubt whether after all it was not primarily a verbal 
suffix, which afterwards in certain cases slipped inside the 
root. Thus, for example, though we have scindo in Latin 
from SKID, yet in Greek we have anlh-vrj-iJbi, and atceh-av- 
vv-fii : is the n in the Latin form the remnant of an affix 
na or nu which has been displaced ? This is quite possible. I 
think it cannot be denied that there has been some displace- 
ment. But the opposite view is also possible : that from the 
endeavour to avoid the massing of consonantal sound late in 
the word, which was unsuited to the peculiar liquidity of the 
Greek language, the n in a/avS was passed on ; that <tklvB-/u,i 
became c/uS-va-fit, the new vowel being essential to sound the 
n, if indeed it did not exist as a connecting vowel before the 
transposition. The lengthening of the second syllable may 
have been caused by the accent having at one time fallen 
upon it. We have then to decide which is the most probable 
of these two possible hypotheses: by the first the nasal is 
only mechanical, part of a grammatical suffix; by the second 
it is dynamic. I incline to the latter; a further argument for 
which is the fact that in Sanskrit and Greek this nasal is found 
only in the present tense and those immediately connected 
with it : and the same thing is true of those roots which are 
strengthened by raising the vowel to a higher step in the scale : 
this harmony seems to bring the two phenomena under the 
same head : the meaning of the fact will be explained after- 
wards. Though this rule is not observed in Latin, yet there 
are traces of its having been so once : thus we have fra-n-go, 
but fregi, fractum (pyyvvfu, prj^oy, py/cros) : then the strength- 
ened stem began to supersede the other, partly as in pungo, 
pupugi, but punctum, wholly as in iungo, iunxi, iunctum. 
This argument however loses something of its force from its 
being applicable to other verbs which have their present 



V.] REDUPLICATION. 95 

strengthened by undoubted formative suffixes, e.g. ya, as 
kcli(d (for /caF-yo-jju), where the future is /cavaa) (for /caF-aco), 
and the second aorist iKa(F)r)v with no trace of the suffix; 
or sko, as /36<tk(o and pasco, where the suffix is also confined 
to the present. 

In the absence then of positive certainty as to the na- 
ture of this nasal, I shall not describe the usage of it fur- 
ther, confining my attention to the two other undoubted 
methods of strengthening the simple root. 



Reduplication. 

This is probably the earliest, certainly the most natural, Reduplica- 
method of expressing greater intensity of feeling. But for this ^ l est ^ nd 
very reason, because it is the earliest, the traces of it in Greek sim P le ^ 

J method. 

and Latin are smaller than those of the other more refined 
and subtle methods of producing the same result, which have 
gradually superseded it. These traces are, as might be ex- 
pected, most common in words which are obviously immedi- 
ately onomatopoetic : e. g. akaXa^co — ululo, &c. And indeed 
the greater number of examples adduced by Prof. Pott 1 to 
prove the wide extent of this principle are derived from the 
Tataric or Oceanic speeches. In the ever-varying languages 
of savages, based almost entirely on conscious onomatopoeia, 
Reduplication is almost the only method employed to Evidence 
strengthen the expression of an idea. Thousands of exam- riveTfro'm 
pies are given by Pott. So also with children ; every one ihe lan - 
must have observed how naturally they form a language of savages 
their own on this principle : with them a watch is not a watch drm 
but a tick-tick, a railway-engine is not a railway-engine but a 

1 In his book called Doppelung alseines der icicldiystcn Bildungsmittel dcr 
Sprache, in which the question is treated in the most thoroughgoing and 
most unreadable way. 



96 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

puff-puff. No doubt much of this is the traditional language 
of the nursery; but this is no real objection : it shews at least 
that a child apprehends ideas most easily under these forms. 
The first word which a child utters, mama, is a proof how 
natural it is. If it be objected that the barbarous dialects of 
savages and the semi-articulate lispings of children can supply 
no arguments for a scientific treatment of language, I do not 
admit this without modification. To argue on the etymology 
of particular words in some speech which has for centuries 
been, comparatively speaking, fixed by being the medium of 
a literature — to connect these with similar words in savage 
languages, is I admit unscientific and dangerous. But surely 
we may base general principles of language on a numerous 
array of linguistic facts and methods of constructing words 
observed in innumerable savage dialects. And if there be 
any tendency shewn by such observation, it is the tendency 
to reduplication. Can we doubt that mama is the name for 
mother which comes first to the infant's lips in other lands 
besides our own ? Whether or no there be any truth in the 
physiological explanation of the fact given by a learned 
German, that the lips of the infant are strengthened before 
any other organs by suction, and therefore it produces most 
naturally the labial sounds in mama, papa, baba, I will not 
stop to enquire : it seems not improbable. But the fact 
remains. Do we suppose that a Roman baby made his debut 
in conversation (with Catienus), Mater te appello ? And if it 
be said that mater really was the Roman word for mother, and 
not mama, no doubt it was in the Roman literary language ; 
but I do not believe it was in the Roman child-language. And 
if that child had never been taught the literary language, 
he would probably have gone on calling his mater, mama, 
just as savages do who have no literary language. The 
child and savage in this respect stand on precisely the same 



V.] REDUPLICATION. g? 

footing ; and are just the examples we need to shew us what 
are likely to be the first steps of any language before it has 
reached its literary stage, 

The fact that with us English the word mama is so often 
retained side by side with mother, may perhaps be explained 
by the fact that there is perhaps no other modern European 
people which shews so much tendency to (partly onomato- 
poetic) reduplication. Consider not merely the interjectional 
ha ha, tut tut, hoity toity, but also phrases which in some 
cases obviously arose from imitation of sound, though others 
shew at least at present no signs of such derivation. For 
example, ding dong, jingle jangle, tittle tattle, are obviously 
onomatopoetic : but such derivation is less clear in knick- 
knack, slip slop, riff raff, harumscarum, hugger-mugger, hurly 
burly, hotchpotch, tag-rag, humdrum, helter skelter, and 
numberless others, which any one can supply for himself. 
I shall confine myself to examples of reduplication taken from 
the Greek and Latin : these will be most familiar to you, 
and the principle, if proved for one language, is proved for all. 

In the Greek and Latin then we may with tolerable cer- General 
tainty trace the process in the imitative names of birds, &c. l£ t ^ n . 
Thus we have cuculus, turtur, ulula, upupa (eiroyfr, rirri^, c \ vl V. Re .~ 
fca/cfeaftr)), and many others, where the name is expressive of in imitative 
the sound produced by the creature : other words express 
sound in general, as tintinnabulum, "a, bell," but there are 
few such words in Greek or Latin languages which retain 
small traces of the savage period. But Prof. Pott is probably 
right in thinking that he sees a relic of this principle in 
that fondness for alliteration which prevailed so much and in al- 
among the early Latin poets, Ennius, Naevius, and Plautus. 
They conceived that their idea was more fully expressed by 
repetition of the same syllable or syllables, even though the 
sense was not clearly and directly intensified, as in the case 
of reduplication. How curiously they laboured at this process 
p. L. 7 



98 DYNAMIC CHARGE. [Lect. 

may be well seen in the really remarkable fragment of 
Naevius, from the Lycurgus, 

Alis sublime alios saltus illicite ubi 
Bipedes volucres lino linquant lumina. 

In these two lines the syllable al occurs twice, li six times, 
hi twice, es twice, in three times. And yet the alliteration is 
so cleverly managed by reproducing the same syllable gene- 
rally in different parts of the words, that in a rapid reading 
we are only conscious of a general harmony of sounds very 
pleasing to the ear. It is only on close examination we per- 
ceive how artificial the process has been. Summa ars celavit 
artem. Commonly however the effect is much more obvious: 
in Plautus it is exceedingly frequent and generally without 
much reason ; no end seems to be served by it : it has 
become apparently a mere trick of composition. Lucretius 
also has much of it, and it harmonizes well with his simple 
style; e.g. in his description of Sicily, as "multa munita 
uirum ui," or in the well-known line, "mortalem uitam mors 
cum immortalis ademit" (in. 867) — which indeed is rather an 
instance of an idea wonderfully intensified by reduplication 
than of alliteration. Even Virgil did not altogether disdain 
the artifice. In his 

Neu patriae ualidas in uiscera uertite uires 

a certain strength is no doubt given to the line by the ham- 
mer-like beats of the v sound. Alliteration is found much 
more rarely in the Greek poets. Yet a perfect and most 
effective example may be borrowed from the artificial Alex- 
andrian school in the well-known and exquisitely beautiful 
lines of the Epitaphium Bionis 1 : 

alal ral ybdXor^ai puev iirav Kara kclttov oXcovrai 
rjBe ra ^Xcopa creXiva to t evOakh ovkov dvrjOov 
varepov av ^ooovtc teal efe ero? aXXo <f>vovTi m 
a/i/i,e? 8' ol fieyakoi /ecu fcaprepol ol aocfrol avSpes, 
1 Moschus, in. 101—106. 






V.] REDUPLICATION. 99 

OTTTTcre TTpara OdvwfLes, clvclkooi iv %dovl Koi\a 
evhofie? ev fiaXa fia/cpcv drep/xova vrjyperov virvov. 
To begin with the last line : clearly much of its match- 
less length and strength is derived from the double ev, the 
double /la, and the fourfold ov. I am speaking of course 
only of the artificial helps, and not ignoring the power of the 
simple wording. But a careful examination will shew that 
much more of the melody of the entire passage is due to 
artificial aid. First of all the passage — naturally in conse- 
quence of the simile — divides itself into two equal parts of 
three lines each. The leading note of the whole is the syl- 
lable ov : it occurs in every line but one, eleven times in all. 
But in the first two lines of each half the syllable av occurs 
— once in the first line, once in the second, once in the fourth, 
twice in the fifth, but not in either the third or the sixth. 
In each half the av dies out by degrees, making way for the 
ov, which reigns triumphant in the last line of each. Now it 
is quite true that A is an older and stronger vowel than : 
but in Greek, as we shall hereafter see, o in consequence 
perhaps of its broader sound is constantly used as a stronger 
modification of a, which may have been a weaker sound 
than the Indo-European A, perhaps not much stronger than 
the Sanskrit a. Therefore the change from av to ov in this 
passage is a rise in the scale of sound, marking, as I believe, 
the rise in the intensity of the pathos. And as if to point 
this out more clearly, the poet whilst commencing the first 
clause with ai four times, in the corresponding line of the 
second clause has written ot five times, repeating it again 
twice at the end of the fifth line, after which we have neither 
ai nor av again. Nay, even though this may be fanciful, I 
cannot help thinking that the writer meant to give the key at 
the end of the first line, where we have the ascending sound, 
av-, ov-, cov-, the last not occurring again. Be this as it may, 
the general principle is, I think, unmistakeable, though it is 



100 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

so subtle that I for one had read the passage many a time 
before I perceived it. 

These examples of alliteration are no proof of the use 
of reduplication as a formative principle, but they shew the 
natural bent of the human mind to intensify an idea by repe- 
tition of sound. I now pass on to cases where we find redu- 
plication employed to intensify either the quality or quan- 
SUght tity of particular words and roots. Here we might most 

f.yff.(*pt& f)T 

the forma- naturally expect to find it in the formation of the superlative; 

verlativeT anc ^ suc ^ * s m( ^ed mos t common in savage dialects. It is also 
found, though not as a rule, in Sanskrit, e. g. alpa is little, and 
alpdlpa is very little. But if it ever existed in Greek and 
Latin, it has entirely passed away before historic times, when 
we find the requisite increase of idea expressed by formative 
suffixes. Yet even in them, as Pott has pointed out, a lin- 
gering feeling of the possibility of the process is seen in 
such words as Tpia^iycaro^, rpiSovXos, and the Latin tris- 
curria. Here we have reduplication, or triplication rather, 
in the spirit if not in the letter. A savage would have said 
8ov\o$ov\o8ov\o<;. The more cultivated Greek could ex- 
press the same idea with more dexterity. A further exam- 
ple is to be found in the rather artificial compound used by 
Callimachus in his very beautiful epitaph on Heracleitus, 

d\\a <Tv jxev irov y 
%elv ' AXi/capvaorcrev, rerpairaXat o-7toBlt}. 

A sort of reduplication again may be seen in the very com- 
mon ovBeU oy, nemo non, &c. These are all superlatives : in 
all these it is intended to express the strongest affirmation. 
And though here the reduplication is certainly not of the 
reason, since one negative drives out the other, yet currency 
was probably given to the expressions by the fact of their 
coinciding with the popular love for repetition of the same 
sound. 



V.] REDUPLICATION. 101 

Far more important for us, as entering more widely into 
the building up of the languages, are the traces still to be 
found in Greek and Latin of the systematic reduplication of 
primary roots to produce frequentative and desiderative Regular 

1 , formation 

verbs, and more rarely nouns. In Sanskrit such verbs are offrequen- 
regularly formed from every root, by reduplication. Thus 2 - W fe WS ^ e5> 
BUDH is a Sanskrit root meaning "to know:" bobudh (or 
bobudhya) denotes " to know frequently," or " to know well" 
(i.e. is either a frequentative or intensive verb), bubodhisha 
is "to desire to know." It will be observed that in two out 
of these three verbs affixes ya and sa are added, over and 
above reduplication; but it cannot be proved, and is not 
very probable, that when so employed they were ever signi- 
ficant. What their primary signification was is now uncer- 
tain — at most recoverable only by guess-work; and it is more 
likely that when they were first thus employed they were 
purely formal, mere grammatical machinery. The spirit was 
in the reduplication. Turning now to Greek and Latin we 
find — besides such onomatopoetic verbs as \a\ayelv, mur- 
murare, and many others — intensives or frequentatives, for 
one signification often runs into the other, thus formed; 
as fjuapfjuatpetv, "to flash," from MAP, originally to rub, 
and so to smooth down, polish. Similarly ira^alveiv is 
an intensive of <I>AN : the whole root is repeated, and the 
aspirate changed to the hard, and the dental nasal to the 
labial nasal according to rule. So also yapyapl^eiv, " to 
gurgle," from TAP, "to swallow" (the Lat. VOR for GVOR 
in carni-voru-s, vora-re, but also gul-a, glu-tire, &c.) : com- 
pare the Latin gurgulio. Likewise iroL-irvv-w, "to pant," 
from IINT, "to breathe;" Se^Woyitai from AI, "to fear," 
jjL€pfir)p[%€Lv, and the Latin me-mor, memor-ia, &c. from a root 
which in Greek took the forms MAP MEP, and MOR in 
Latin, but which is to be referred back to an Indo-European 
SMAR: the Sanskrit alone has retained the S: thus fiep/xrj- 



102 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

pi^eiv is "to be careful," intensified from the simple root 
which means " to remember." 

It will be observed that in many of these examples the 
reduplicated syllable is strengthened ; as in iroiirvvco, SeiSicrcro- 
ficu, and many others that might be cited — iraiiraXKa), $cu- 
SaXXco, the noun \al\ay]r, "whirlwind," from AAB, "to seize," 
and others. In these there is little doubt that the feeling 
of their origin survived until historic times ; that men were 
conscious in using these words that they were employing 
intensives, and felt their relation to the simple root. But 
there are others where we find the reduplicated syllable 
weakened, as in fiep/uajpL^Lv and me-mor; in iciiavvo<;, "a curl" 
(compared with the Latin cincinnus, whence Cincinnatus). In 
all such words the feeling of their origin was gradually 
passing out of the minds of men; the emphasis had ceased 
to be laid on the reduplicated syllable, as it must have been 
at first when it was the significant part of the compound; 
and hence the syllable became weakened. This is a good 
illustration of the change which passes by degrees over all 
language; that which was originally formative loses its 
signification, and becomes only mechanical: the living prin- 
ciple passes out, and deadness comes on. And this brings 
us to a numerous list of verbs where this deadness is almost 
perfect: in some the intensive or desiderative force has 
merely died out; in others the no longer significant form 
seems to have been used to express a different idea. Such 
verbs are /nL/jbio/jiat, (Greek root ME, Indo-European MA, "to 
measure"), which seems originally to have signified " I fre- 
quently measure myself," and thus, in a restricted sense, "to 
measure myself by some one, to copy or imitate ;" where the 
frequentative force is perfectly lost. The Latin imitor and 
imago are not improbably blunted forms of mi-mitor and 
mi-mago 1 , and so formed originally on the same principle 
1 See however Corssen, K. B. 252. 



V.] REDUPLICATION. 103 

from the same root, which is found in me-tior, and strength- 
ened in mensa and mensura. As papbkopuai stands by regular 
phonetic change for ^it-fia-yo-fiai, it exactly corresponds in 
form to bo-bhud-ya, mentioned above. In such verbs as 
BtSdo-fCG), dpapicTKco, &c. the intensive force seems not only to 
be lost, but a causal sense to have taken its place — unless 
indeed they are to be explained as desideratives — the termi- 
national ctkco corresponding to the sa of bubodhisha, so that 
dpapicTKco should mean, " I desire something to fit," BtSdo-Kco, 
" I desire some one to think ;" but this is not very probable. 
It is however also possible that these forms may be accounted 
for by another application of the same principle which I have 
been illustrating — an application to which we owe a very 
large and important class of verbs both in Greek and Latin. 
Such verbs are, e.g. SISco/jll and tlOtj/jll in Greek. In these Keduplka- 
verbs it will be observed that reduplication is found only in pi „ ec i ~ to 
the present tense, and the closely connected imperfect; ^0% distinguish 
in the future huaco or the aorists eSco/ca and eScov, whilst the from mo- 
reduplication of the perfect is different in its nature : whereas action. 
in the intensives, which I have instanced above, the redupli- 
cation passes through all the tenses, although their occur- 
rence is not frequent. In fact, in them the reduplicated 
verb is practically a new root; in these others the redupli- 
cation is an accident of the present tense. How is this 
difference to be explained ? 

All language must of course be able to distinguish the 
incomplete from the complete stage of action, the " is doing" 
from the " is done," the ytyveadcu from the elvcu. But this 
distinction is not sufficient to express all our conceptions 
with sufficient clearness. In describing an incomplete action 
we require often to express whether the operation is over 
in a moment or requires time; whether it is momentary or 
lasting — to distinguish the " I do" from the w I am doing," 
the yeveaOcu from the yiyveaOai. Thus then we have three 



04 



DYNAMIC CHANGE. 



[Leot. 



stages of action, so to speak: the Momentary, the Pro- 
tracted, the Completed. And each of these stages ought in 
a perfectly logical language to have its own three sub- 
divisions in time, the past, the present, and the future. That 
is, it should possess nine forms produced by internal modifi- 
cation of the root, with the help of such suffixes as have lost 
their original signification, and have become mere parts of 
the machinery of grammar; not by periphrases, as in seven 
out of nine times in the forms by which the English denotes 
the nine distinct ideas; thus: 





Present. 


Future. Past 


Momentary. 


I do. 


I shall do. I did. 


Protracted. 


I am doing. 


I shall he doing. | I was doing. 


Completed. 


I have done. 


I shall have done. ! I had done. 

1 



Unfortunately, historical investigation of the develop- 
ment of language shews that in the early stages of growth 
inflections, derivatives, and the rest of the stock of grammar, 
are not formed to meet previously felt logical needs. The 
order of the process is just reversed. A language develops 
endless inflectional and formative suffixes which are vague 
and undefined in their meaning. It is only later, when the 
need for more accurate expression is felt in consequence of the 
development of thought and feeling, that these forms found 
ready to hand are taken and restricted to the expression of 
distinct logical categories 1 ; still not so entirely but that some 
in every class refuse to be bound by the restriction, and 
retain their old free but indefinite meaning. An example 



1 Compare Curtius, Camp. Philology and Classical Scholarship, 



p. 20. 



V.] REDUPLICATIOX. 105 

will make my meaning plain. Take the numerous deriva- 
tive Greek and Latin verbs in -sco. These are commonly- 
called Inceptives; and the majority do denote the beginniug 
of an action. But there are very many, and those apparently 
very old verbs, in both languages where there is no inceptive 
meaning to be seen, neither are there any traces that it ever 
existed. Such verbs are fiocrtccD, (pav/cco, OpoocrKco in Greek, 
pasco, nascor, &c. in Latin. These are in use quite simple 
verbs, whatever the origin of the suffix may have been. 
And it is most probable that this suffix and many others 
existed before the need for inceptive verbs was felt, with 
a vaguer meaning, which partly for that very reason, partly 
through lapse of time, is not now discoverable. Such in- 
stances force us to believe that the changes of form in lan- 
guage are not to be explained by reference to an arbitrary list 
of logical ideas; and consequently — to return to our present 
subject — we shall not expect to find in any language exactly 
the same number of forms as that of the above-mentioned 
categories. Most languages possess far fewer : some few 
(especially the Greek) have more, but these new forms differ 
for the most part from the old only in being produced by for- 
mative suffixes, whereas the old were not : e.g. the first or weak 
aorist, the weak or active perfect, the first passive future ; 
these do not express any new idea. The Sanskrit possesses 
nearly all the forms, and the traces of them which exist in 
the German language lead us to the belief that they were 
Indo-European. But the Hindu differs from all other people 
of the stock. He was not as the Greek or as the Koman. 
The genius of the Hindu people was contemplative, dreamy, 
mystical — not logical, as that of the Greek 1 . Accordingly 

1 Thus the Hindu could brood over an idea : for example, he could believe 
firmly in the immortality of the soul at a time when any such idea was put 
forth by the best of the Greeks with stammering lips. In the BhagavadgitS, 
the genius of the Sanskrit language for variety of expression, enormously rich 



106 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

the Sanskrit has preserved nearly all the grammatical forms 
which we find in Greek. But it has preserved them with 
little trace in common use of that nice distinction which we 
always find in Greek usage. How then are these distinc- 
tions of time and order preserved in the Greek? How did 
they succeed in distinguishing by simple modification of a 
root, the momentary, the protracted, the complete perform- 
ance of that which the root expressed? Principally by 
means of that which will form the second point of our 
description of the growth of language — by Vowel-increase 
or intensification. For example, take the Greek root Xitt; it 
denotes " to leave momentarily." By increase of the vowel 
t to ei we get Xeoir, "to leave during a protracted time." 
Increase again to Xoltt, and we get the completed action. 
Thus eXnrov, the aor. = " I left at a particular moment ;" 
XeiTTQ) = " I am leaving," as a continued action ; XeXonra, " I 
have left and done with it." It cannot indeed be asserted 
that this vowel intensification is thus applied quite regularly 
in all cases; but this variation will be considered in its 
proper place. Nor again is it the only method by which to 
express the greater fulness of idea involved in protracted 
as contrasted with momentary action; or, in grammatical 
phrase, to strengthen the Present Stem. Reduplication is 
also used for this end; and so we get back to the verbs 
BiSco/u and Tidrjiii, which occasioned this long but necessary 

though it be, seems almost insufficient to express the intensity of the poet's be- 
lief. " Unborn, unchangeable, eternal, old of days," he cries, "the spirit dies 

not with the dying body Like as a man casts aside vestures worn with age, 

and takes to himself others new : so casting aside its worn-out bodies, the 
indwelling spirit enters yet new ones.... Impenetrable is it, unconsumable, 
unfusible, unwasteable ; enduring, all-pervading, firm, unshaken, eternal ; 
invisible, inconceivable, unchangeable." We shall not find anything like this 
in Greek : the strength of the belief is all Indian. But it is quite possible 
that a Greek would have expressed such belief as he possessed more logically : 
for logic is one of the many gifts for which the world has to thank the Greeks : 
the logic of the Hindu has never spread beyond India. 



V.] RED UP LIC A TION. 1 07 

digression. Take BIBco/xl; the root is AO, found in Boctls, 
Borrjp, &c. This has been already strengthened to Bco in the 
momentary tenses, the mom. fut. Bwaco, the mom. past, 
i.e. the aorist eBcotca) consequently to express the protracted 
present and past, i. e. the imperfect, we require a new me- 
thod; which is reduplication, and we get BIBw/ju, iBiBovv. 
There is no permanent future ; Bcoaco being regarded as suffi- 
cient to express both instantaneous and continuous action. 
Similarly there is no perfect future ; we must have recourse 
to the periphrasis BeBtofcoos ecroficu. In verbs in co however 
we find this future in the passive — the future which rejoices 
in the mysterious title Paulopost. Thus XeXeiyjro/jLai, is 
exactly " I shall have been left." To form all the tenses of 
the completed stem reduplication is again employed, distin- 
guished from that of the protracted by the vowel of the 
new syllable, which is always e: and so by analogy this 
method crept into use even for those verbs whose stems 
were already distinguished by the subtler method of vowel- 
increase, as Xe-Xonr: a fact which shews that the meaning of 
vowel intensification must have been fading out of the Greek 
mind. Owing to the great length of this tense — Be-Bcofc-a-fii 
— the termination fell off without any compensatory length- 
ening of the connecting vowel being felt to be required, as 
it had been in the present of the protracted stem. One verb 
however in Attic forms the completed present with long co, 
probably from its shortness, tftcco, "I have come;" and they 
are common in Doric; thus Theokritus uses BeBv/cco, irefyvKco, 
and many others. The momentary present is not found in 
Attic verbs, side by side with the prot. pres.; one or other 
form only is found. But in Epic poetry traces of the simple 
root-form are to be found even when there is a strengthened 
present stem: and the sense of the momentary present is 
frequently supplied in Attic, as is well known, by the aorist 
or momentary past. 



108 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

Other examples of a present stem strengthened by redu- 
plication are ylyvo/jbac for yi-yev-o-[iai, root TEN (yevrjcro/jLcu, 
iyevofiijv) ; fit/jiva) for [ii-fxev-o), existing beside fievto, mom. 
pres. from MEN ; ttltttco for 7ri-7rer-(o, root IIET, Dor. aor. 
eirerov from which eireaov is a weakening: /ce/cXofiat,, fMefi- 
/3\o/j,at, and many others. In Latin we have si-sto, redupli- 
cated from STA; gigno formed like ylyvo/iai from GEN, 
gi-gen-o; sero is se-so, from SA (supine satum), an Indo- 
European root, whence we derive our " sow;" bibo from PA, by 
weakening of p to b, of which there are other examples found ; 
thus Boblicola for Poplicola, or as we generally have it with 
one p only weakened, Publicola; PA is supported in Latin 
by potus, poculum, &c. It will be observed that in most of 
these Latin verbs the reduplication, instead of confining itself 
to the present, has passed over the rest of the tense-system. 
There are examples of this in Greek also. Thus we find 
BiBdcTKco, BiSaijoy (contrast /M-fivrj-tr/eo/icu, fut. juvij-ao-fiai with 
no reduplication), iStBa^a, nay even the perfect BeBlSa-^a ; 
where the treble d must have been a sore trial to the Greek 
sense of euphony. These cases might undoubtedly be explain- 
ed as intensive verbs, which therefore retained the reduplica- 
tion through all the tenses. But there is, at least now, no in- 
tensive force in them, and it is not very likely that they ever 
were such. I prefer to explain them on the same principle 
I endeavoured to set forth above : that as time went on the 
meaning of the process by which the present stem was 
strengthened faded out of the consciousness of those who 
used it. Use, the ultimate court of appeal in all questions 
of language, did not require in these verbs the distinction 
between the stronger and weaker form : the stronger super- 
seded the weaker, and the other tenses were formed from it 
as though it had been the original form. 

I have now, I think, sketched out all the different 
methods of strengthening verbs by reduplication. I will 



V.] VOWEL-INTENSIFICATION. 109 

add a few examples of reduplicated nouns : in all of them 
there was doubtless once some intensive force, but it has 
been lost with time. Such are d/cco/cr] from AK, aycoyo? 
from Ar (whence dyayelv) ; in both these the radical vowel 
is streugthenod to co ; like dpooyo? by dpTjyco, iSooSr) from EA ; 
here the strengthening of the radical vowel is irregular. 
Still simpler cases are Tdprapos, tcdpicapov (Latin career) ; 
but in these the meaning is not very easy to explain. 



Vowel-Intensifica tion. 

We may now pass on to the fuller consideration of the 
second, and much more important method of strengthening 
the idea contained in a root, that of modifying the radical 
vowel. It is obvious that this method, if carried out com- 
pletely, could be employed only by a people whose percep- 
tion of the distinction of sounds was nice and cultivated. 
Yet it is quite clear that the Indo-European race before its 
separation did possess a rising scale of all the vowel-sounds. 
This scale has been mentioned before 1 : it maybe repeated 
here. 



rig. vowels. 


First step. 


Second step. 


a, 


a + a = d, 


a + d = d, 


i 


a 4- % = ai, 


a + ai = di, 


u, 


a + u = au, 


a + au = du. 



These new sounds were employed by the different peoples The inten- 
of the original stock under different forms according to their s lfi edvo ^ u 

o o jormsaijjer 

various phonetic laws, and with more or less of system and in different 

hmyuayes. 

precision according to their different gifts. A complete list 
of all the substitutes is given by Schleicher 2 . Those employed 



1 See p. 33. 2 See Camp. p. 160. 



no DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

by the Greek and Latin will come immediately under our 

fuller consideration. We may glance for a moment at those 

of some of the other nations, so far as they employed them. 

Most recog- First, then, Sanskrit remained the closest to the system 

'sanJkrU; of tne original speech, only varying indeed from it by sub- 

and most g^utinsf e and 6 for the first steps of the I and U scales, re- 

regularly ° 

employed spectively : in the A scale it has not attained to any means 
of distinguishing the first or second steps ; indeed the Indian 
grammarians say that there is no Guna of a, only Vriddhi, 
that is, no first step, only a second one 1 . 

One of the most important uses of the scales is the for- 
mation of nominal bases primary and secondary : thus from 
VID, "to know," comes by regular ascent the well-known 
word Veda: and the second step (together with the suffix 
-ika, which is purely formal) gives us VaidiJca, " belonging 
to the Vedas," an adjective which (minus its final a) is now 
commonly used by English Sanskritists instead of the com- 
moner " Vedic." A more full, indeed redundant, list of deri- 
vatives than the Sanskrit possesses by this method of vowel 
intensification with formal suffixes, cannot well be conceived. 
The Greek and Latin have similar examples, as we shall see ; 
but nothing like the fulness of the Sanskrit vocabulary. 
Indeed it is in this power of forming bases, both nominal 
and verbal, and its marvellous facility in combining no- 
minal bases thus formed, that the genius of the Sanskrit is 
especially manifested, as compared with the classical lan- 
guages. It is not equally manifested in conjugation. Here 
we find what is perhaps its oldest application, namely to 

1 These terms Guna and Vriddhi have hecome to a certain extent familiar 
to those who are not Sanskrit scholars, hy their occurrence in treatises on 
comparative philology— more especially in England from their heing used by 
the late Di Donaldson. They have been, with good reason, generally rejected 
by later philologists: they are purely Indian, and do not express satisfactorily 
all the uses which can be made of the vowel-scales, by languages possessed 
of a fuller vowel Bystem than the Indo-European and Sanskrit. 



V.] VOWEL-INTENSIFICATION. ur 

strengthen some verbal bases in those persons whose ter- 
minations are technically called weak. Among these are the 
three persons singular of the present. Thus from i " to go " 
is formed, emi, "I go;" e'shi, "thou goest;" eti, "he goes :" but 
in the plural, imds, " we go." This is exactly analogous to 
the Greek elfii, el, M<rt...Lfiev: compare also BlSw/jll with SlSo- 
fj,ev. This phenomenon has been explained in different ways, 
into which it is not here the place to enter fully : the most 
satisfactory, if it could be fully applied, would be Professor 
Benfey's, who makes it the result of accentuation 1 . He lays 
down that the accent naturally falls on the modifying sylla- 
ble of a word. Thus in i-mds, "we go," the strong termina- 
tion mas modifies and restricts the general idea of going to 
the particular going of some persons, more than two, and 
spoken of by themselves ; therefore it is accented. But 
when certain terminations became weakened, e. g. mi from 
ma, they were unable longer to bear the accent ; which then 
fell back either on the radical syllable and strengthened it, 
as emi, or on some additional modifying element, if such 
existed, as the reduplicated syllable in ddddmi (plur. 1, 
dadmds), or a formative suffix as nn : thus from chi, chi-nd- 
mi, but plural chi-nu-mds (compare Set/c-vv-jju, Bec/c-vv-fiev). 
Here, however, the Greek is not in accordance with the 
Sanskrit, for Bc8o/iev and ifiev throw their accent back in 
accordance with the common Greek rule : though in many 
minute respects the accentuation is the same in the two lan- 
guages. It is of course possible that here also it was origi- 
nally the same, and that in course of time as the reason 
of the variety became forgotten, the distinction in accent 
passed also out of use 2 . Such an explanation is very possi- 

1 See bis Kitrze Sanskrit Grammatih, §§ 153, 154. 

2 The accent is still found on the last syllable in (pa^iv and ia/xh, but 
these two verbs are again discordant with the Sanskrit in having dfxl and 
(pTjfit ; even though the latter has the radical vowel increased in the singular. 



ii 4 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

Difficulty effects of this difficulty in the Latin will be obvious when 
guiking we look at the irregularity of the cases where the a has 
the two "been intensified. Thus we have deer from the root ah, 

steps. 

which is short in acies, &c; but macer is still short from mak, 
macies; the causal of the same root macero is long, but 
lacero, similarly formed, is short : perhaps in the case of 
macero, the formation of which is denominative rather than 
causal, the a has been lengthened on the analogy of causals 
like pldc-are from plac-ere, which is formed quite regularly 
on the Sanskrit, and probably Indo-European principle. 
Sagax stands by sagns, pac-iscor by pdc-s (pax,pdci-s). From 
these and other examples which could be given it would be 
impossible to lay down any rule for Latin use in this v scale 
when the a has been retained and not weakened to e. If 
we turn to Greek we shall find more clearness. Thus we 
have from the root ah (Indo-European and Sanskrit SVAD, 
compare Latin sua(d)vis), dheiv, edSa; from Xa/c, \dicelv, 
\e\d/ca; from \a9, eXdOov, \e\a9a, in the older (Doric) form 
and in Doric perfects generally. Thus we see the a restricted 
regularly to the perfect; the presents being otherwise 
strengthened (dvSdvco, XdcrKco, \av0dvco, &c). The long a, 
which sometimes appears in the present of these verbs, e.g. 
fcpdy, /cpd^o), K€Kpdya, is phonetic, not dynamic; /cpa%co = 
Kpdy-y-G). The Ionic rj, the weakened form of d, is similarly 
used as the rule for the perfect, not the present; for cases 
like TTTTjcraco can generally be explained like Kpd^co: that is, 
irrrjaaco = irrdic-y-ay ; compare the compound aor. KaTeirra- 
kov. There are however exceptions to this rule; thus we 
find Trrfl-vv-iLi, perf. ireiT7]ya } where there is no vowel differ- 
ence: in other cases, e.g. pqyvvfju, where y is found in the 
present, we have a further increase in the perfect, as eppcoya. 
On the whole then it seems allowable to regard a and its 
dialectic equivalent rj as occupying the highest step in the 
a-scale. 



V.] 70 WEL-INTEXSIFICA TI01T. 1 1 5 

Then how did they represent the first step and keep it Different 
distinct from the second ? Sometimes, as we have seen, by distin- 
strengthening the verbal stem in different ways; either by^f"^'." 5 ' 
reduplication, as «rn7/u for cn-Gja-^i, or by nasalisation, as in Greek; 
d(v)8-dv-co, or by suffixes, as in \a(/c)-ovcG), aw-rco, (fiaivco for 
<f>av-yo), ay-vv-jM, &c. But very frequently they employed especially 
a vowel- variation ready to hand, one originally phonetic merit of the 
only, but capable of being applied to distinguish different e ?! s !: in f 
shades of meaning 1 ; that division of the a sound, so often A into a, 
mentioned, into a, e, o, which will be fully described as soon 
as we come to phonetic change. Now is a heavier sound 
than e; so that while e is employed for the present stem, the 
greater intensity of idea implied in the completed action 
can be expressed by 0; as e.g. in irepOw, 7T€7rop6a; o-rpe^co, 
tarpooa, &c. Bat this more frequently is the mechanism 
employed in the formation of nominal bases. Thus by 
7T€p0-co we have irbpQ-o in 7rro\i7ropdo<;; by arpicp-co, o-rpo(f)-'>], 
and (TTp6(f>-o-<;; by e^-o), g%-o-?, and o^-?;, and innumerable 
others 2 . Indeed this may fairly be called the most important 
of all the methods of forming nouns in the language. 

1 This faculty of language may be well illustrated from Prof. Curtius, 
note 21 on page 31 of his Essay on Comp. Philology and Classical Scholar- 
ship. He there says (Engl, trans.): "The distinction between exb/J-eda and 
ixd/J-(0ov was surely at first purely phonic, but it subsequently got to be 
employed to separate the plural from the dual. And the Sanskrit termination 
of the first person dual vahe is most likely but a variation of the 1st pi. mahe; 
and scarcely any one would maintain that in the v there is really a significant 
mark of the dual relation (cf. vayani, plur. = "we"). Thus too I consider 
irlvdos as a by form of -rrddos, one which the phonic tendency alone has 
brought forward. There was never any difference between, e. g. fitvdos and 
/3a0os, although a more refined feeling of the language introduced one 
between irivdos and irddos. This is in some degree also the case with the 
German "Ablaut," [i.e. the change of a vowel to another vowel of a different 
class according to certain laws], more especially in its application to the 
formation of words. It can be shewn that the change of i, a, and «, in the 
verb trinhen was there before, and that it arose from very different reasons 
tliiin the difference in the meaning of Trank and Trunk." 

2 See the full list in Leo Meyer, Vergleichende Qrammatik, 1. 110, &c. 

8—2 



n6 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

A slight difficulty arises here from the fact that the 
ascent from e to o is not always (indeed not generally) the 
entire process in the verb-formations on this method. Be- 
sides the perfect stem in o and the present stem in e we 
commonly find another stem in a : thus by rirpo^a and 
Tpicf)(D we have erpcufiov ; by ecrrpo^a and arpecjxD, iarpa- 
<f>rjv. Nov/ this stem, as expressing the simple momentary 
action, ought undoubtedly to be expressed by the weakest 
vowel; and so we find it in the other vowel-scales; e.g. from 
Xiir we have e-Xiir-ov, Xelir-a), XeXonr-a. Clearly we have 
this relation ; as rerpo^a is to XeXoara, so is rpe(j>co to Xelirco, 
and erpacfrov to eXiirov. But A is undoubtedly a heavier 
vowel than E 1 ; and therefore we seem in this particular 
case to have a weakening and not a strengthening in the 
first step of the scale, though the second step is an increase 
of sound above the first. It may be that the "Sprachgefuhl" 
of the Greek was here for once at fault; and that the three 
separate forms being all to hand were taken on a false 
analogy, in order to gain that distinctness which, as we have 
seen before, the Greeks prized above all other people 2 . 
Traces of The Latin is not without traces of the same change. 

tlie same . 

thod in Though few and far between, compared with the abundance 
of the Greek, they are sufficient to shew that it inherited 
the same method as the sister language, though not the same 
power of developing it. Thus we find among the verbs the 
increase from e to 6, in inoneo, the eausal (compare Sanskrit 
mdn-aijd-mi) by me-min-i (weakened from me-men-i), men- 

1 I have suggested however above, in explanation of a similar difficulty, 
that the Greek a may have been the weakest of the three substitutes for 
original A. 

2 This difficulty is ignored by Schleicher in «his • Compendium, p. 62, 
where, in treating of the different intensifications of a, he makes e to o one of 
the first steps. To me it appears certainly a second step in the verbs men- 
tioned above ; and in nouns oxos stands to ^x w just as <ttoixos (second step) 
is to <rrei'%o; (<JT/yJ and (nrovhi] to c7rei/^co (<nrv8). 



me 

Latin. 



Y.J VOWEL-IXTEXSIFIGA TWX. 1 1 7 

{ti)s. If man-e-o belong (as has been already suggested) to 
the same root we have here an example, I believe the only 
one in Latin, of the triple form in actual use, but with the 
distinction practically forgotten. Just like moneo is noceo, 
the causal of nee (in nex, necis), Indo-European NAK. Pass- 
ing to nouns we have tog-a from teg; proc-a-s, "a wooer," 
by prec-ari; soc-iu-s by seq-ui and ad-sec-la, and others 1 . 

We have seen above that 77 has gained a place in several Advantage 
present stems, sometimes on phonetic grounds, in other cases f er ent sym- 
perhaps by analogy. This gave the Greeks an advantage \^/°J om i s 
which they were not slow to use. Since co : 77 :: : e, an- in the 
other method of ascent in the a scale was gained thereby. 
Thus from the root (F)PAr, present pr/y-vv-/j,L, they formed 
the perfect eppcoya — in exact analogy, as has been already 
observed, with the Gothic lat, leta, lailot.. This co makes its 
way also into noun-forms ; thus from tttcuc (Trrrjacrci)) we 
get tttcdk-s " the hare," (the by-form 7rr(oo-aco is perhaps a 
denominative verb formed from it) : so also dpcoy-os stands by 
aprjyo), " to help," (root PAK) : and it occurs regularly in 
reduplicated nouns, as dy-coy-6-s and dy-coy-ij, d/e-co/eri], and 
(perhaps formed on analogy with these) even iS-ooS-r) from 
the base EA. 

Short e is raised to long e, in Greek rarely, as yu,e-/x?;X-a Quantita- 
(fieXo)), and in such cases as tl-0t]-/jll by the side of TL-de-jxev : 
but more commonly in Latin, where we find sed-es (sed-eo), 
teg-ula (teg-o), lex (leg-is), and col-leg-a by leg-o; and among 
verbs ed-i (ed-o). 

Similarly short is lengthened, again in Greek more 
rarely than in Latin : cS-coSa is lengthened from OA; arw- 
fjLvXos stands by aro/jua : and the SISco/m class of verbs corre- 
sponds to the TL0r]fiL class. In Latin vox (vdc-is) stands to 
voc-o in the same relation as lex to lego: persona is an in- 
crease of sound upon snn-u-*, and sop-i-o above oiop-or. In 
1 See Schleicher, p. 87. 



ttve in- 
crease. 



u8 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

these two last cases the o comes from original u : the Indo- 
European roots are SVAN and SVAP respectively, bnt this 
does not affect the principle of the increase of the o. As 
a general rule it would seem that the Latin language pre- 
ferred the simpler expedient of a merely quantitative increase 
of sound (a to a, e to e, o to o) : while the subtler genius of 
the Greek chose rather a qualitative strengthening, like that 
of e to o. 
(ii) The We may now pass to the I-scale, which may claim the 

merit of being the most perfect and least corrupted exponent 
of the scheme, both in Greek and Latin. Thus in Greek we 
have the already often quoted A1II, whence eXiirov, Xeiirco, 
\e\oL7ra ; and nouns formed at each of the steps, \en/a?, 
(at least in compounds,) for original Xet7r-Ti-?, and \o£7r~o?: 
Ill®, eiriQov and TriOavoq, ireiOa) the verb, the noun 7rec0c6 
and 7ret(7t-5 (in compounds like 7reio-//3poTo? applied to 
the sceptre, iEsch. CJioeph. 362), irkiroiGa, but no noun of 
the second step. Very frequently we do not find all the 
three stages exhibited in the verb; but there is generally 
some noun to supply the missing link. Thus from STIX 
Ave have earo^ov rarely, but c7Ti^e? (nom. plural); arel^ 
commonly, but no perfect in ot: we have however the noun 
(jto^o?, to shew that the principle of the change was con- 
sciously held by the language, even when not fully em- 
ployed. So from FIK "to look," or "seem," we find such 
forms as eFitcrov, the dual third person in Odyssey IX. 27 ; 
no present Fet/cco in use, but ei/coov, " a semblance," or "image:' 
and the second stage is evidenced by eotKa for FeFotfca. 
Similarly from I " to go," we have ijiev, el/u, and olfios, " a 
way." KI "to lie," is unrepresented in the simplest form, 
which is found in the Latin quies, but the first step is seen 
in the so-called perfect, but really present tense Ket/xai, 
and the second in kolttj and Koifjuaco. Good Latin examples 
arc hard to find ; indeed there is probably no verb which 



V.] VOWEL-INTENSIFICA TIOX. 1 1 9 

exhibits all the stages, for the Latin verb had no form to 
denote the completed action, and expressed the perfect 
merely by reduplicating the simple base of the momentary 
action; often in later times by the suffixes -vi and -si for 
fid and esi, the perfects of FIT and ES respectively. It is 
to the nouns that we must look for traces of the second 
step, disguised of course by the Latin peculiarity of pro- 
nunciation, which changed oi into oe, and that sometimes 
into u. Thus FID produces fides, feidus (in classical Latin 
fldus), andfeido (fldo), foidus (foedus). We have the first 
step in deico (clico) from DIK\ from I, which is short in 
Iter, comes eire (ire, "to go") : and we find in inscriptions also 
forms like veivos (vlvus), deivos (dlvus), veicos (yicits), which 
is formed from the same root as Fo/ato? ; but while the Latin 
raises the radical i one step, the Greek jumps to the second. 
The second stage is seen in moenera (from moinera), which 
again passed into munera: and we find in inscriptions 1 
such forms as oinos, coiravit, oitile, which appear in classical 
Latin as units, curavit, and utile. In none of these cases, it 
is true, can we point to the radical vowel occurring in any 
Latin word, or indeed to the first steps ei in each case. Yet 
the analogy of fides, fidus and foedus, — coupled with the 
fact that the corruption in the Latin vowels is of such 
old date, that we cannot well expect many perfect examples 
of the principle, which yet the Italians must have once 
possessed in common with the Greeks, — may justify us in 
regarding them as isolated instances of vowel intensification. 

There are some curious instances where ai is found as Occurrence 
an increase of i, by the side of ei and oi. These, as has ^«*«S<?rf* 
been noticed by both Leo Meyer and Schleicher, are gene- f orm of '• 
rally cases where the radical form had early fallen into 
disuse ; and the intensified form was therefore used without 
any sense of its relation to the original root, a root which 

J Sec Corssen, Aussprachc, 1. 194. 



120 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. 

must have ceased to occur at an early period of the Graeco- 
Italian history, before the application of ei and oi to denote 
the first and second steps respectively had become the 
established rule. Thus we deduce an Indo-European root 
IDH, "to kindle," from the Sanskrit indh, with the same 
sense (past part; iddha, that is idh + ta, in accordance with a 
euphonic law of the language). Now no word is found in 
either Greek or Latin which contains this root in its simple 
form ; but several which contain it raised a step, that is to 
cud im Greek and aed in Latin. Such are aWco, aWos and 
aWrjp ; aed-es\ aestus and aes-tas.; in the last two d has 
passed into s before t by the ordinary Latin rule. We 
must suppose therefore that at some very early period 
of the Graeco- Italian nationality the root idh was raised 
to aidh, from which came the above-mentioned words ; 
that the simple form of the root then was lost, so en- 
tirely that no tenses formed from it occur under the verb 
aW(o, of which only the present and imperfect, that is the 
present and past of the protracted-action are found. The 
principle of the intensification is lost; the formal result 
alone remains. The increase of sound may be even older 
than the Graeco-Italian period, for we find from the same 
root (which however is very barren except in Greek and 
Latin) the Sanskrit, noun edhas "fire-wood," and the 0. H. G. 
eit, "fire" 2 : in that case the root idh may have been lost 
immediately after the first separation of the Eastern and 
Western nations. 

The Latin. has some examples to shew where the original 

1 Was aedes "the place of a fire," taken by the Latins alone to denote a 
house, because of the fires necessary to counteract the malaria of the plains 
of Latium ? Or was it originally, as in classical times, a temple, from the 
use of fire in sacrifice ? Then it would pass to the general signification of 
"a building," and the plural "the buildings " be used for the more extensive 
family house, like U/xol in the Greek. 
- ( 'uit ins. dr. lit. p. 225. 



V.] TO WEL-INTEXSIFICATIOX. 1 2 1 

and the intensified base are both preserved. Such are mis-er 
and maes-tus: perhaps also imitor and aem-idus: a similar 
process of formation is claimed for Scaevus (a/caccs), laevus 
(\afc09), and caecus\ Whether alcov, devum, are formed by 
the same method from I "to go" with suffix -van, seems to 
me doubtful. A large list of these examples is given by 
Corssen in the second edition of his Aussprache, &c. 

Perfect examples of intensification in the K-scale are (iii) The 
more difficult to find, even in Greek. We have from EAT@ 
rjXvdov, i\ev(6)ao{Aai and el\r]Xov6a, where both steps occur. 
We have from <I>TT, eifivyov and cpevy co, but the perfect is 
only 7T6(f>€vya ; nor does the higher form seem to occur in 
any noun. So also from XT was formed aevw, and from 
XT, %euft>, where the v however passed into the digamma, 
which was lost in common Greek, and ykw> remained. 
Similarly from ST is fe&>. From PT and IINT we have 
beside pew and nrvew, pev/xa and nrvev/JLa as first steps, then 
por] (for poFrj that is pov + rj), ttvotj (ttvoFt), ttvov + rj) for 
second steps: similarly %cavov from. ST. The two steps 
are found without any radical form occurring in airevhw, 
a7rovSr): it is probable however from the identity of meaning 
that the simple form is found in the Latin stud-ium, and 
there are examples of the transition from t to it. So also 
we find dtcoXovOos beside icekevOos, where the simple form 
is very uncertain 2 . 

In classical Latin all distinction between the two steps is 
lost, because both eu and ou passed into u. Corssen however 3 
has recovered from inscriptions old proper names, such as 
Teurisci, Leucesie (apparently from LUK, whence Xev/cos), 
and the Greeks transliterated Lucius into Aev/ctos, which how- 



1 See Schleicher, p. 91. 

- See Schleicher, note to p. 08 (from which the above examples arc 
taken); and Benfey, Gr. Wurz. Lexicon, 11. 319. 
■'• Amsp. 1. 176. 



fied to au. 



122 DYNAMIC CHANGE. [Lect. Y. 

ever may be only on analogy. On is found more frequently 
in the inscriptions, as Loucina, Loucania, ious (for ius, iuris), 
ioudex, &c. For duco we find donco, where we should rather 
have expected deuco as the first step: perhaps ou superseded 
in this and other places an original eu, by the assimilating 
force of the u upon the e 1 . In rufus by the side of ruber, and 
nubo by pro-nilb-a, we see an increase ; but which step 
cannot certainly be fixed. 
U intend- Just as in the i-scale we found an archaic increase to ai, 

so also we find au in the it-scale, but still more rarely: an 
instance is seen in av^avco and augeo, the simplest form of 
which, UG, is preserved in ify-t-rj? and Sanskrit ug-ra, 
" powerful." The sense " to increase " was probably the 
original one 2 ; but while the simpler form in Greek and Latin 
was restricted to bodily growth and health, the strengthened 
form retained the wider sense, and the connection betwen 
the two was lost. Navis, vavs, may come from a root nit 
(Schleicher) or snu (Curtius) ; the original s however must 
have been lost in all the languages. Lastly the Latin 
Aurora was originally Aus-osa, a strengthened form from 
US, " to burn," already mentioned. 

1 Schleicher, p. 93. 2 Gr. Et. p. 171. 



LECTURE VI. 



VOWEL-CHAXGE. 



We have now cleared the way for the discussion of the na- Phonetic 
tare and extent of phonetic variation in Greek and Latin. ° to a ^Q 
Let me repeat what I said in my first lecture, that by pho- c ^ se f~7 
netic change I mean such change of sound as w T as originally tiadatlov, 
caused purely by the desire for easier articulation, and was t i nct j rl i. 
not intended to denote any modification of idea, though the culatwn - 
new forms may in some few cases have been afterwards so 
employed. Two different sets of phenomena resulted from 
this striving for ease of sound. Either a new sound was sub- 
stituted for the old more difficult sound; in which case we 
have the result of Weak Articulation: or in consequence of a 
lazy, perhaps sometimes drawling pronunciation, an entirely 
new sound became heard in connection with an old one — a 
sound to which I have already applied the expressive term 
of Prof. Curtius, " parasitic ; " such cases will be considered 
separately under the head of Indistinct Articulation. 

Again, Weak Articulation may be viewed under four dif- Weak Ar» 
ferent aspects. In all the tendency is the same; but the re- t^Jral 
suits are different from the modifying effect of neighbouring ''""T' ';''''][, 
sounds in certain cases. Sometimes there seems to be no heads. 



124 VO WEL-CHA NGE. [ Lect. 

i. Substitu- such cause; here we have cases of pure weakening — the sub- 
stitution of a weaker for a stronger sound; for no reason that 
we can see but the inability of the people to pronounce the 
old one, as in the case of the Greek spirants. Such weaken- 
ings are generally very old: the sound thus affected is found 
in a weakened form throughout the whole language, not 
merely in dialects of it. Sometimes on the other hand we find 
thoroughly capricious affections of particular sounds which 
generally remain unaffected, as for example when a in Greek 
is weakened to t — a rare change but not peculiar to any one 
dialect — or to v, which is almost confined to Aeolic. But nei- 
ther in the regular, nor yet in these last irregular "sporadic" 
changes (I adopt another term of Prof. Curtius) is there any 
visible effect produced by adjoining sounds: and this class of 
changes, the motive, for which lies in the sound itself, will be 
considered first under the head of Substitution. 

7. Loss. When this substitution, has gone to the utmost length 

and the sound has perished altogether;, or where there has 
been no substitution, but a too difficult combination of sounds 
has been accidentally produced and one consequently has 
fallen out; or where a particular sound was either difficult, 
or disagreeable to the feeling of the language, to produce at 
the end. of a word: — the part which is always more exposed to 
phonetic influences than any other: under these circum- 
stances we have our second head — Loss. 

So far the tendency of the change has been all in one 
direction. We have had not only an easier sound produced 
by it, but also a weaker sound. The course of phonetic de- 
gradation has been down the list of sounds arranged in order 
of strength : and though the scale may vary in particular de- 
tails for different languages — for example the vowel-scale is 
not quite the same in Greek and in Latin — yet it remains 
constant for each language. We now come to a different 
cause of change — the influence of neighbouring sounds. 



'£> — v o 



VI.] VOWEL-CHANGE. 125 

Here the operation of the main principle is no longer uni- 
form. It is true that the change always produces an easier 
sound : but it is a matter of indifference whether that easier 
sound is brought about by weakening a strong to correspond 
w T ith an adjacent weak letter, as Soy-fia from Sok, ttoctcjl from 
iroh-Gi, or by strengthening a weak sound for a similar reason, 
as \6k-tos from Aey, rerra-pe^ from rer-fa-pes. The change 
indeed is almost alwa}^s from a stronger to a weaker letter, 
except in cases of inflection or formation, such as \e\€K-Tcu or 
\efc-ros: and in these it is clear that the importance of keep- 
ing the suffix uncorrupted was felt (both in Greek and Latin) 
to outweigh all other considerations; and therefore Xey-ros 
did not become \e7S0?, as might have been expected. But 
in all such apparent exceptions the great principle of pho- 
netic change was kept in the spirit, though not in the letter. 
These variations are, as a rule, later than those mentioned 
under the first two heads : they are often historically traceable. 
They are also not so universal; not so essential a part of the 
character of the language as a whole. Rather they are among 
the distinguishing marks of dialects. JSTo doubt " euphonic 
changes," as they are called in grammars, such as Soy/jua and 
Xe/cro?, fractus and segmentum (root SEC) are found univer- 
sally enough. But where the principle has acted to its fullest 
extent; where two sounds have not merely drawn nearer to 
each other, but have become identical, we commonly find its 
action limited to one or two dialects. Thus rerrapes or reV- 
crapes is Attic, but rerope^ is Doric, and iriavpes Aeolic: Krevpo) 
is Aeolic for KTev-yco, but is not found in any other dialect. In 
all such cases we have to do merely with a growing tendency, 
spreading indeed more and more over the whole language, but 
acting most irregularly, attacking a combination of sounds in 
one word but leaving it in another, even in the mouth of the 
same speaker; yet still acting more frequently in one district 
than another, and so tending to produce a u dialect" — the 



p. 
iation. 



126 VO WEL-GHA NGE. [Lect. 

title we give to the result of a bundle of tendencies often 
contradictory, and rarely fully developed, which is yet suffi- 
ciently distinct from other results similarly produced to re- 
quire a separate name 1 . 
Assimi- Neighbouring sounds then affect each other, and thus 
modify the action of our principle of phonetic change. They 
do this in two distinct ways. First, when two dissimilar 
sounds meet, and it is difficult to pronounce both clearly, 
one assimilates the other — more or less perfectly — to itself; 
and so we get our third head — Assimilation. 
4. Lissimi- Secondly, when two similar sounds occur close together, 
and where a considerable effort is required to place the or- 
gans of speech twice consecutively in the same or a similar 
position, the opposite result to the last is produced; — which 
gives us our fourth head — Dissimilation. 

I shall consider the operation of these four tendencies on 
Greek and Latin together. I do so partly because the rela- 
tive strength and weakness of the two languages will be seen 
better in this way than if I treated them separately. But 
my principal reason is this; I hope in this way to make more 

1 Prof. Ernst Curtius in his History of Greece (Vol. 1. p. 27, Eng. trans.) 
says that Aeolic is not a dialect like the Doric and Ionic, on the ground that 
it varies in the different regions in which it is found, and has no universally 
prevalent type. I do not understand this distinction. Do the Aeolic of 
Asia and the Aeolic of Boeotia differ more than the Doric of Crete and the 
Doric of Syracuse ? No doubt if we regard a dialect as the result of homo- 
geneous tendencies, we shall find many things contradictory in the Aeolic, 
which cannot be reduced to any "fixed law of sounds." But this is true 
of every dialect. Every dialect is sometimes strong, sometimes weak, even 
in the same class of formations, in consequence of the incomplete action of 
the tendencies which produced it. If these tendencies had been fully de- 
veloped, it would have been no more a dialect, but a distinct language. In 
truth instead of restricting the Greek dialects to two, it would be wiser 
to extend their number. Doric includes at least two very marked varieties, 
- Aeolic three : of these the Doric of Sparta differs not very much from the 
Aeolic of Boeotia: so that it would not be unscientific to speak of five 
distinct dialects, without taking into account the varieties of the Ionic. 
At any rate Aeolic lias as good a claim to be a generic title as Doric. 



VI.] VOWEL-CHANGE. 127 

evident the reason of the changes which I have to enume- 
rate; to throw some light on the general principles of lan- 
guage, not merely give a list of the changes found in two. 
For these principles are universal principles: they act on 
every language, not least upon our own : and they will be 
best understood by observing their action in as wide a field 
as possible. I shall be obliged indeed to consider vowel- 
change and consonantal change separately, each under the 
four forms I have mentioned, because the attempt to com- 
bine them w 7 ould practically create confusion. 

The following are the general results to which our inves- 
tigation will lead us with respect to Greek and Latin. We 
shall find the first tendency — that which leads to substitu- 
tion — is felt very considerably in both languages ; that it 
affects the Latin vowels much more than those of the Greek; 
the consonants about equally; but not quite the same conso- 
nants in the two languages. The second is rarely felt in Greek 
whether among vowels or consonants, and is always more or 
less reducible to rule : whereas it is constant and highly ir- 
regular in its operation on the Latin. The third and fourth 
are utterly powerless over the strong Greek vowel-S}'stem : 
whilst they affect the Latin vowels more than those of any 
other Indo-European language: on the other hand the Greek 
consonants have suffered more from Assimilation than the 
Latin. 

As my object is to describe the different forms under Later— not 

which the simpler material of the Indo-European language pmil '1',. 

appears in Greek and Latin, it does not enter into my plan *T* jjf **5 

to give any detailed history of tne new sounds or symbols L " t; " " ( - 

. . phabcts. 

which those languages severally produced, except in so far 

as they were developed out of the older forms. Such deve- 
lopment was the origin of the only variation in the vowel 
system of the Greek and Latin, the presence of i he Bounds 
and 0, which we shall presently see were known even before 



128 VO WELCH A XQK. [Lect. 

the Graeco-Italian period. In historical times, as is well 
known, the Greek alphabet was enriched by the symbols 77 
and co, or rather rj at least was employed in a new way: 
this mechanism for the expression of a distinction of sound, 
which they of course possessed equally with the Greeks, was 
never attained to by the Italians. Of the new Greek conso- 
nants, three — f, -fy, ^) — are only arbitrary and more conve- 
nient expressions for the combinations ks, ps, sp. Two more 
— £ and the spiritus asper, (if that be a real letter; I do 
not intend to enter into that fearful controversy) — will appear 
to have arisen from phonetic causes. Lastly, comes the 
almost obsolete Koppa: of which I shall speak together with 
the Latin Q in a future lecture. The Italian produced fewer 
new consonants. Three are phonetic in their origin, and will 
be described hereafter — -f, h, and the old Latin z, equivalent 
to a soft s, which is only found in very early Latin, and in the 
Oscan. The symbol x, as its position in the alphabet shews, 
must have been borrowed from the Greek at a period later 
than the time when the symbols of the whole -Greek alphabet 
were introduced into Rome from Cumae, but before it was 
superseded in Greece by the symbol £, as there is no reason 
to believe that x ever denoted anything at Rome but cs. 
The history of the symbols c and q will be given hereafter. 
Lastly, the letters y and z (== f, that is dz) were borrowed 
at a late period of the republic from the Greek, as has been 
already described (see note to Lecture I.). The Greek cha- 
racters — not of course the sounds — were derived, as is well 
known, from the Phoenician: and at a later, but far distant 
pre-historic period, were passed on to the Romans in the 
modified form under which they occurred among the Greeks 
of South West Italy and Sicily \ 
Pronuncia- It seems almost superfluous to add that for etymological 
purposes it is essential to give to the Graeco-Italian vowels 
1 See Monamer, Unteritalischen Dialekte, Table 1. 



tion of the 
vowels. 



VI.] SUBSTITUTION. 129 

the sounds which they have always had in other Indo- 
European countries than England: that a (short and long) 
should be sounded as in man and far; e as in men and 
mane; i as in bin and been; as in on and own; u as in put 
and boot The Greek upsilon, as we shall see, is an excep- 
tion to this rule. Our unfortunate English pronunciation 
of the vowels makes scientific etymology doubly difficult to 
us. It not only obscures real relationships but suggests 
false ones. 

I shall take the four heads of vowel-change in a slightly 
different order from that given above, as follows: Substitu- 
tion, Assimilation, Dissimilation, Loss. This will be found 
most convenient for the Latin. 



I. Substitution. 

1. Splitting of the A-sound. 

I shall commence with the most universal and most 1. A=a, e, 
important change, that of Indo-European A into a, e, 
in Graeco- Italian, and a into d, e, 0. It seems needless 
to prove that this change must have been originally 
phonetic. There is no reason to believe that it was any- 
thing else. Short e and are not raised powers of any of 
the simple vowels; and a, with which they are certainly 
connected, is heavier than either of them, the order in 
respect of weight being a, 0, e; which is preserved in the 
conservative Latin. In Greek indeed, as I have mentioned 
above, the three vowels seem to be used in the A-scale, 
a being the radical ; and e and o the first and second steps 
respectively; and I have suggested, what is quite possible, 
that in Greek the a may have been allowed to sink to a dull 
indistinct sound, like the Sanskrit a, and also the English in 
very many words, e.g. the final a in altar. That is heavier 
than e is best seen by comparing the same formations in 
P.L. 9 



130 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

Sanskrit and in Greek; thus jajdna = yeyova, where the short 
a of the Sanskrit is equivalent to e, and long a to o; simi- 
larly bhardmi = (j>epco, but bhdra = cj)6po$. 

It was to be expected a priori that the strongest and by- 
far the commonest vowel of the original speech would be 
more corrupted in use than any other. Instances of its 
variation are common enough within our own island. The 
full sound of the a is more commonly retained in Scotland, 
whilst in England it has been thinned down to the e-sound, 
though spelt generally as a, and sometimes changed to o ; 
in which case the Scotch frequently shews the e-sound, spelt 
as ae or ai. Thus the original na is still found in Scotland, 
but it is more commonly nae (e-sound) ; whilst as in England 
we have the same sound, nay, beside no. Scotch awa is Eng- 
lish away. Twa is two, snaw is snow; but baith (e-sound 
again) is both, laith is loth, gae is go. In none of these 
changes is there anything dynamic : they are purely phonetic 
variations. 
Found These instances would shew that this variation was not 

confined to the Graeco-Italian. It extended over all the 
European peoples; no doubt very gradually. I have already 
said it is not found in Sanskrit, which has no e or 6, and its 
e, o are equivalents of ai, au. It has therefore been inferred 
that the tendency was not felt till after the separation of 
the East from the West 1 . This seems at variance with 
the statement which I made in my second Lecture, that 
the North European families parted off from the Eastern, 
before the nations of Southern Europe had left them; since 
this change is certainly found in members of the Teutonic 
and Sclavonic groups. How is this difficulty to be solved ? 
Was there some connection again formed between the Ger- 
mans and the Greeks after their first parting? Nothing would 
seem more improbable. Was this vowel-change the result 

1 By Curtius, Gr. Et- p. 85. 



VI] SUBSTITUTION. 13 1 

of independent phonetic action in the separated peoples? 
This again is hard to believe, when we see the simple words 
and roots which exhibit the same variation. I think we 
must conclude that the tendency to this change existed even 
before the first separation. We can well imagine that there 
may even then have been dialectical differences, distinguish- 
ing to some extent the fathers of the future nations. The 
causes producing these differences need not have acted uni- 
formly: while the ancestors of the Hindus and Greeks 
agreed in most points, the ancestors of the Greeks and the 
Germans may have agreed in one. This partial action 
would be quite in accordance with what I have said above 
about the formation of dialects within the Greek. 

The weakening from a to e clearly was the first in time. History of 
It has spread more widely than that from a to over the 2^ ^^ 
Western languages, and is also more prevalent in particular 
languages. Thus (to borrow one or two examples from 
Curtius) we find that from Indo-European dakan, "ten," 
have come Greek Be/ca, Latin decern, O.H.G. zehan, Gothic 
taihun (modified from tihun by a phonetic law of the lan- 
guage by which i and u become ai and au before r and h), 
Sclavonic deseti: also from sad, "to sit," Greek e£o?, Latin 
sedes, Gothic sita, Lithuanian sedmi. It will be observed 
that the Sclavo-Lithuanian agrees with the Greek and Latin: 
in the Teutonic family while the Old High German has e 
the Gothic has i. This i is said to be weakened from e, as 
also u from o 1 ; but it is strange that the middle step should 
have passed away without a trace of it being left, for there 
are no e or in Gothic. May we infer that this tendency 
was not fully developed within the Teutonic race till Goths 
were distinct from Germans, after which time each people 
carried out the change in its own way? At all events the 

1 Curtius, Or. 4<:t. p. 85. 

9— 2 



132 VO WEL-GHANGE. [Lect. 

use of i arid u in Gothic is very parallel to that of e and o 
in Greek 1 . 

The tendency then to let a sink into e was clearly strong 
among the Western peoples before their separation. Traces 
of the change from a to o are much harder to find. Thus 2 
/3ou? and bos are the O. H.G. chuo, Slavonic govedo. But 
whilst aktan is octo in Graeco-Italian, no vowel-change is to 
be seen in the Gothic ahtau, or Lithuanian aszutni; ovis, 
" a sheep," is avis in Gothic and Lithuanian as much as in 
Sanskrit. This tendency had scarcely begun to act at the 
time of the separation of the Northern and Southern peo- 
ples: it was then checked in the North, while circumstances, 
which we cannot now certainly ascertain, favoured its deve-~ 
lopment among the Graeco-Italian people. We may now 
trace the progress of both changes among that people a 
little closer. 

The change from a to e had passed widely over the lan- 
guage (as we should naturally have expected) before its 
division into Greek and Latin. It had seized on far the 
greater number of roots. AS had become E8\ AD, "to 
eat," was EI); BHAR was BHER, &c. Even the suffixes 
had in numerous cases been affected by it. Thus patar had 
become pater, -tara was -tero (he^i-repo-, dex-tero-), -mana 
v/SiS-meno- as in $l8o-/jL6vo-, vertu-m{e)no-; though in this and 
similar words, alumnus, columna, the e fell out altogether 
after passing through intermediate i, which survives in ter- 
minus Sindfemina, 



1 Thus in Greek we had beside radical TPA<*>, the steins rpe<f> and Tpo<f>. 
Similarly in Gothic; Indo-Eur. BANDH, "to bind," becomes BAND, 
whence bandi, "a band" or " bond," and bandja, " a prisoner :" the present of 
the verb is binda (analogous to r/3e'0w): and though band, "I bound," does not 
correspond to rerpocpa, but rather to §rpa<pov, yet bioidum, "we bound," gives 
the required analogy— i : u :: e : o. This band (singular) stands to bundum 
(plural) as oX8a to 18/j.ev. 

2 Curtius, Gr. Et. p. 85. 



VI.] SUBSTITUTION. 133 

Still there are many words which either had not been 
attacked before the separation, or in which the " feeling" of 
one or other of the languages (one would like to naturalise, for 
it is impossible to translate, the admirable German " Sprach- 
gefuhl") preserved the older a. Thus we see magnus still 
retaining the old vowel, while the Greek /jueyas has yielded ; 
compare also anguis with e^t?, manere with /neveiv : on the 
other hand, the Greek is more faithful in keeping e'-Xa^u? 
by leuis. It is interesting also to observe how the less culti- 
vated dialects of the same language clung to the older form. 
Thus we find the Doric rpdcfxo by the Attic rpicf)oo ; lapos by 
lepos, and many others. In all such cases the Attic may have 
the weaker form ; but we may well say that its weakness is 
oftentimes its strength, when we remember how it can employ 
its old and new forms to express different orders of action. 

Those roots which preserved the t old a intact seem to 
have been most commonly those which contained a guttural. 
This we should expect, the position of the organs being simi- 
lar in the formation of the two sounds. Thus AK, the widely 
spread root denoting " sharpness," never sank to either EK 
or OK with the short vowel : ew/cy? and oci-or probably came 
through a. Compare the numerous derivatives ukcov, clkwkt}, 
d/cpos; acus, acuo, acies, &c. Similarly AG, PAG, TAG, 
retain the a in both languages as it was in the original. 
Still we find a in many cases where this explanation is not 
applicable. Thus ambhd (cl/jlcjko, ambo), ambhi (dfi<pi } amb-)> 
are examples of the retention of the original vowel in Graeco- 
Italian, while the influence of the labials m and bh has pro- 
duced ubhdu (Sk.), uba (Zend), oba (Sclav.) ; ambhi has become 
umbi in Old Saxon, umpi in 0. H. G. (modern German um). 

The transition from a to is a much less accomplished from a to 

((' B V JVC- 

fact. That it took place in Graeco-Italian times is shewn by qU ent before 
the occurring in both languages in many certainly old /",//',',''''' 
words : as o'Ft9 = ovis : /3oFo- = bovi- ; in both of those cases period. 



1 34 VO WELCH! NGE. [Lect 

the o is already due to the following v. Further, oKTco=octd, 
86jj,o<; = domus ; o^ecv is answered by odor ; opvv\xai by orior. 
Still the list is not great, especially of roots : and there are 
many examples which shew how partially the tendency acted. 
Thus we have da-re by the side of Bc-So-vat, asinus by ovos 
(for os-vos), lavere by \oveiv (=\o¥eiv): Avhilst the Greek 
presents the original form in /jbaKafcos (Latin mollis), in 
tcaphia (Latin cord-), and others. We find the Greek dialects 
wavering : thus the Aeolic in general takes the o : as in 
the Aeolic poem which comes at the end of the Theokritean 
idylls we have ofivdaOr^v for dvafjbvaaOrjvai 1 ; and in Sappho's 
first fragment ovla occurs for dv'ia (1. 3) 2 . But in the nume- 
rals we find the Doric ^ikclti corresponding to the Attic 
eiKoai : on the other hand the vowel of recro-apes is older than 
that of the Doric TeVope?. And a similar wavering in the 
Attic is shewn by forms like Xeaiva (for old \eav-y a) by the 
side of Xeovr- ; re/crawo/iai, (for TeKTav-y o-fiat) by retcrov-, 
Sanskrit takshan. As a general rule, however, the Doric is 
distinguished from the Attic by the a- forms : thus we have 
a,T€pos, 'Idpoov, &c. on good inscriptions : <ya for ye is univer- 
sal both in Doric and Aeolic : we also find forms like rpdxco 
and rpdxco in Theokritus and Pindar ; but these last may be 
due to the over-subtlety of grammarians. Traces of the 
same change within the Latin may be seen in portio com- 
pared with pars; scob-s (by scabere), and especially in 
proper names, as Valerius and Yolesus, Fabius and Fovius, 
In these last it is impossible that the change should have 
been dynamic ; as may have been the case with scobs, &c. 

Applica- is most commonly employed by the Greek in suffixes. 

neio vowels. Thus the original navas becomes z^eFo?, and the old Latin 
agrees in presenting nouos, weakened afterwards to nouus. 
So also patar-as (genitive of patar) becomes irarep-os ; in 

1 Theok. xxix. 2G. 

3 For other examples see Alirens, De Diukctis Graccis, i. 76. 



VI.] SUBSTITUTION. 135 

Latin this termination has further passed into •: pat(e)ris. 
In both Greek and Latin the formative suffix os (originally 
as) for neuter nouns sank to es in the oblique cases : thus 7^0?, 
genitive yeve(a)o<z : genus (originally genos), generis, for genes- 
is. The suffix as is however retained without weakening in 
many neuter nouns, as Kepas ; while in neuter adjec- 
tives it is weakened to e? in the nominative, as aacpes. The 
participial suffix ont (originally ant) has suffered the same 
weakening in Latin but not in Greek ; compare Sk. bharan- 
tam with Gk. cpepovra, Lat. ferentem. One relic of the 
Graeco-Italian form is to be seen in euntem, weakened from 
eontem. It will be observed that here the Greek has retained 
the a in the case-suffix ; and the rule holds generally that 
where a final nasal has been lost, a is kept and not weak- 
ened to : thus we find heica from dakan (decern), eirra (sep- 
tem), ehet^a from a-dik-sam(i) , the Sanskrit adiksham ; com- 
pare Latin dicebam. In the vocative, Greek and Latin agree 
in weakening the Graeco-Italian termination to e, the 
most convenient of all vowels to end a word. Passing to 
roots we shall find that o appears but sparingly in Greek ; 
OA and OP have been mentioned above : the two lan- 
guages agree as to the vowel in Latin VOL (uolo, uolt, 
weakened to e in uelle, &c, Greek BOA in fioX-yo-fjuat, Aeolic 
ffoWofiai 1 , Attic /3ov\o/jlcu : and occurs very frequently in 
Latin roots, though mostly in connection with a v, as uom-o 
(fe/jL-e-a>), uoc-o (Gr. FEII), uol-uo ( FeX), &c, or other labial 
sound, as mor-ior, dom-o, &c, from which it may be inferred 
that the Graeco-Italian vowel was commonly e, which in 
Latin was assimilated to the form 0. 

Something has been already said of the great gain which fecial 
the Greeks derived from this splitting of the a-sound : many '^jrccklan- 
examples are given in Curtius' Essay, already referred to*.£JjX e 

1 Thcok. xxviii. 15. 

2 Comp. Phil, and Clan. Scholarship, p. 33 ct Beqq. 



136 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

We have seen how they used the three vowels to distinguish 
the three stages of action, expressed by rpacf), rpefa rpo(j) : 
also to distinguish different cases which all originally had 
but one vowel a, as 7r68a?, 7roSe?, 75-0869 \ The Latin here, as 
generally, gave up all its gain, in weakening all alike to e, 
though it then distinguished the genitive singular by further 
weakening to pedis. But perhaps it is in conjugation that 
we see best the strength and precision which the Greek has 
gained by the original weakening. It has been enabled 
thereby to employ the different vowels, for the root, the 
suffix, and the internal modification of the root. Thus, how 
much more varied in sound, how much more expressive of 
keen perception of logical distinction, is yeyova than the 
Sanskrit jajdna. Here the a is left in both languages to 
form the suffix' 2 ; but in Greek the radical vowel is changed 
to o instead of being merely raised from short to long a : 
whilst the reduplicated syllable retains the original e. 

Compare too the first person plural yeyovafiev with the 
Sanskrit jajnima. Here the use of the vowels e and o in 
the first syllables enables the Greek without sacrifice of 
euphony to keep the strong original a for the connecting 
vowel between the root and termination. The Sanskrit on 
the contrary allowed the a to sink into i : and the result was 
that the link was too weak to maintain the balance of the 
word, and it became corrupted, as jajanima to jajnima, or 
tatanima to tenima. Again, it is by this alternation of the 
a with the dull o that the Greeks are able to distinguish 
one tense from another, as ifcreivafiev (aor.) from iicTeivofiev 
(imp.) ; e%o//,ej> (pres.) from c^epey, the halfway form between 
e^fievai and e^etv. Lastly, the Greek is a great gainer by 

1 See page 5. 

2 The original suffix of course was yn ; a was only the connecting vowel 
which facilitated the pronunciation of the two consonants. But, as we know, 
fit was lost : and thus from the grammatical point of view, a must he 
regarded as the existing suffix of the 1st person singular. 



VI.] SUBSTITUTION. 1 37 

the three verbal forms in -aw, -eo>, and -000, as compared 
with the single -ay ami of the Sanskrit. No doubt in prac- 
tice this distinction of forms was not so well used as it might 
have been, by being rigidly applied to express distinct ideas. 
Still on the whole the Greek verbs in -oco have an active 
sense, and verbs in -eco are neuter (contrast iroXefiow and 7ro- 
XejjLew), whilst those in -aw, being closely connected with 
nouns in 77, suggest at once their meaning from their deri- 
vation 1 . In Latin the vowel-system became rigid at too 
early a period to allow of the developments we see in Greek: 
consequently we find in it forms which have lost their dis- 
tinctive meaning : thus -(a)o of the first and eo of the second 
conjugation are generally used merely as conjugational forms 
with no distinct trace of their old signification. 

There is one point which may be mentioned here, when 
we are estimating the gains of the Greek language. In 
yeyova the e of the reduplicated syllable properly represents 
the vowel of the root. But at the earliest period at which 
the language is known to us, the vowel had come into uni- 
versal use in this particular tense, to the exclusion of the 
radical vowel : we find for instance rervcjya not rvrv(f>a as we 
ought, and as we find in Sanskrit tu-top-a. And in the same 
way l has come into universal use for strengthening the present 
stem by reduplication, in the somewhat rare instances where 
that method is employed ; BlSco/xt stands in contrast to San- 
skrit daddmi 2 . In such cases Greek is less interesting than 
Sanskrit as a living organism ; it is more beautiful as an 
almost perfect machine. 

Side by side with the extension of a to a, e, o, stands that Traces of 
of a to a, e, o. Curtius goes so far as to say that for everv sl ! n ! lar f l : 

' ° J J vision of a. 

1 Comp. Phil, and Class. Schol. p. 46. 

2 What is stated here of Greek, is true of Latin also to a considerable 
extent. Latin here occupies a sort of midway position between Sanskrit 
and Greek. Its system of reduplication will require fuller discussion after- 
wards. 



138 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. VI. 

Greek a, % co we may expect an original d\ However this 
may be, and it seems somewhat difficult to prove, at least 
some examples may be given to shew that the idea of this 
variation was present to the consciousness of the Graeco- 
Italian language as something possible, on the analogy of the 
division of short a, but much less strongly felt, inasmuch as 
the cases in which it could occur w r ere much fewer. Thus 
(okv and oci-us stand together over against Sanskrit dgu from 
AK : and GNO, despite the reappearance of a in gnarus, is 
certainly a Graeco-Italian form of the original GNA : donum 
with 8d>(rt,)<? may be another example. The entire vowel- 
range is found in the declension, of the suffix -tar, as San- 
skrit dataram, Borrjpa and datorem; within the Greek -rrjp 
and -roup are used with apparent indifference; ^paxurrjro- 
is in Latin brevitati-. A well-known instance of the change in 
Greek is the weakening of a as a nominal suffix to rj in Ionic, 
and to a less extent in Attic. The real nature of this change 
is quite lost in most grammars, which give a, as a Doric broad- 
ening Of 7]. 

1 Gr. Et. p. 384. 



LECTURE VII. 

VOWEL-CHANGE {continued). 



2. Greek Diphthongs. 

The substitution of a, e, o for original a led of course to i. Al=ai, 
a corresponding increase in the number of diphthongs, in AU=av, 
Latin originally as well as in Greek : but the Latin had suf- cu ' ou ' 
fered almost the whole of them to fall into disuse before the 
classical period of its literature. 

In Greece the number of the symbols for the diphthongs 
was still further increased in classical times by the introduc- 
tion of rj and (o to denote the long vowel sounds, which 
had existed previously with no more mark of distinction 
than is found between a and a, X and i, if and v. Thus the 
language possessed in the room of the original ai, an, di, au 
no less than twelve symbols, at, ev } oi, av, ev, ov, at, rjt,, m, av, 
7)v, cov: besides the rather rare vc. The diphthong iu is 
only found in the Teutonic family. 

There seems no reason to doubt that these were all at Diphthongs 
first what their name implies, double sounds; in which the naiiyi 
transition from the first to the second sound was distinctly *'*<"£** 

J sounds. 

audible. It is probable from the nature of the case that 
two sounds should be sounded as two, and probable also 
from their origin. When it was not a dynamic modification 



140 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

of a simple vowel intensifying the idea which that vowel con- 
veyed, a diphthong arose either from the coalition of two dis- 
tinct vowels by the loss of an intermediate consonant, e. g. 
\eye(ji)ev : or secondly, from a spirant being resolved into a 
vowel in accordance with laws of consonantal substitution to 
be mentioned in their place, e. g. avSpelo? from avSpe-yo-$, 
Xoyoio from Xoyo-syo (where the a has left no trace of 
itself) : or thirdly, from the prolongation of the original 
vowel-sound to compensate for the loss of a following con- 
sonant ; thus when v was lost in fjuovaa the first form must 
have been fiooaa, as is shewn by the Doric /agoo-ci, while the 
new vowel was weakened to v in Attic /xovaa, to i in Aeolic 
fjLolcra ; indeed these new diphthongs often remained double 
sounds in Aeolic later than any other form of Greek speech 1 . 
But in whatever way these vowels were brought together, it 
is clear that they would not at once coalesce into one sound ; 
Xeyepev, for example, would for some time assert its right to 
an unimpaired number of syllables : but the crasis would 
begin in the case of identical vowels meeting : similar vowels 
w 7 ould then be modified, and lastly by analogy even dissimilar 
ones. "Similar vowels" are a, e, o, as sprung from the 
same origin, and so passing more easily into each other; 
each of them is "dissimilar" to i and u. 

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to trace the history of 
change of the Greek diphthongs, and fix the time when they ceased to 
dissimilar ^ e (j ou bi e sounds — each sound presumably the same as 

diphthongs r J 

in Greek, when it occurred separately ; neither can we do more than 
guess with more or less of probability at the new single 
sound of each. There can be little doubt that the corruption 
of the diphthong must have been little later in time than 
the causes which produced it. Two vowels following imme- 
diately upon each other are commonly troublesome to pro- 

1 Thus we have {o'Ca in Theokritus (xxix. 5) and 'AxiXXeios {id. 34), and 
many other forms for which see Ahrens, Be Graecis Dialectis (i. 105). 



YIL] SUBSTITUTION. 141 

n ounce : the most simple (and probably the oldest) combina- 
tions of language shew us vowel and consonant occurring alter- 
nately 1 : consequently there must have been a tendency from 
the very first either to drop one of the two vowels which met 
together, or to let them coalesce into some third sound. The 
same word is found with different sounds as far back as the 
days of the Iliad and Odyssey. Thus Leo Meyer 2 quotes 
tcvvopcucTTGov (Od. XVII. 300), but OvfiopalaTwv (II. XVI. 591) : 
and there is plenty of variety in the case-terminations, 
like rei^e'l, tci^ei, &c. Of course we cannot say for certain 
what the sound of at or ec was, when each formed a single 
syllable: but it must have been one single sound, or very 
nearly so. If we pass from the earliest to the latest clas- 
sical literature of Greece, we shall find in the Aeolic idylls 
of Theokritus 3 proof that at least in some words in certain 
parts of Greece the double sound could be retained even 
to the Alexandrian period. Still we may probably safely 
say that at that time the single sound was almost univer- 
sal. Our best evidence for the character and progress of 
the weakening is to be found in the change of the spelling 
in different dialects. Here the tendency is too marked to Tendency 
be doubtful : the second vowel of dissimilar diphthongs is ^ndvaw- 
commonly dropped in writing — in Doric, as ^a\/ceo?, evpea 3 , el, the first 
&c. — and still more in Aeolic, especially in the Boeotian times modi- 
variety of the dialect, accompanied often by a weakening 
of the first vowel also : thus Ahrens quotes the forms ap- 
%?)o9 (for dp-%(uo<;) , 'Ap^o?, wttti/s for 'lirirois, avrv for avru> ; 

1 See Leo Meyer, Vergl. Gram. i. 285, where numerous examples of Greek 
and Latin diphthongs are given, from which I have borrowed largely in this 
lecture. 

2 Id. p. 298. 

3 See examples in note on last page. 

4 Theok. ii. 30, vn. 78. I am aware of course that Theokritus does not 
even in the strictly bucolic poems always use pure Doric forms ; but I quote 
from him only when the principle in question could be proved from other 
less accessible authorities, such as the fragments of Epichamms and Sophron. 



142 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

even sometimes where the diphthong is dynamic, as Fv/cia 
for otKia 1 . The Attic on the contrary keeps the full symbol : 
though in all likelihood it, like the rest of Greece, was 
losing the full sound, perhaps more slowly. Curtius sug- 
gests 2 that 6l and ov must have been double sounds in 
B.c. 403, the year of the introduction of the symbols tj and 
co : otherwise what would have been gained by the distinc- 
tion between ei and rji., 01 and an? But surely at least 
a change of pronunciation from the old to the new school is 
shewn by the often quoted lines of Aristophanes [Clouds, 
849) : 

IBov, Kpefiai, ax; rj\l9iov i^Oiyfjaro 

koX toIctl ^elXeaiv Sieppvrjfcoaiv. . 

Prof. Curtius may be right in saying 3 that the second 
line gives no clear indication of the pronunciation of the at 
by the still old-fashioned Pheidippides : yet at least it shews 

Greek at. that the new sound was thinner, perhaps like the English a 
or German ae: which would correspond to the rj in the 
Boeotian dp%rjo$, and also to the ae by which ai was trans- 
literated in Latin; for ae had the e-sound (English a) in 
the days of Lucretius 4 , and probably much earlier. It may 
then, I think, be considered at least probable that in at 
the stronger a was by degrees overcoming the i — not without 
being itself modified by the contact — and had nearly done 
so in the Alexandrian period. This is commonly proved by 
the rhyme of eyzi to vaiyi in Callimachus' well-known epi- 
gram 5 . In reading the Greek of Sophocles and Plato we 
should probably do well to give both sounds as far as pos- 

Greeh ei. sible. The diphthong ei seems to have wavered in sound 
between e and t, neither sound being strong enough to 

i Gr. Dial i. 187. 

2 Erlailterungen zu meiner Schulgrammctfilt, p. 19. 

3 Stuclien zur Griech. und Lat. Grammatik. Vol. i. Part 2, p. 276. 

4 Corss. Ausspr. i. 186. 

5 xxvm. 6. (ed. Meineke). 



VII.] SUBSTITUTION. 143 

absorb or exclude the other. This is shewn best by Latin 
transliteration. No doubt this test is not so sure in the 
case of the diphthongs as of the other sounds, because the 
Latins lost their diphthongs at so early a period: but the 
variation of spelling in Latin, where we have sometimes e 
and sometimes i may be fairly taken to prove at least the 
various pronunciation in Greek: e.g. gynaeceum and platea, 
but Iphigenia. Probably therefore the sound was some- 
times that of our "grey," where the first vowel is predomi- 
nant but the second still audible — sometimes like " either " 
(old pronunciation) : the varying sound of this word, and 
varying spelling ee, ei and ie in English 1 shew the flexi- 
bility of the combination. The sound of 01 is probably Greek ou 
given pretty correctly by our English "boy:" it then 
passed into a modified w-sound — the Upsilon in fact — as 
we have seen in the Aeolic, e.g. tv$ for rot?; and at a 
much later period to i, which sound it has in modern 
Greek 2 . Those diphthongs which ended with u probably Greek av. 
passed into monophthongs much more rapidly than the 
others: the heavier ^-sound could not be kept distinct like 
the lighter i. Thus av must have soon become the German 
au and our ou ; it is nearly impossible to keep the two 
vowels distinct: and ou we know had the sound of Indo- Greek ou. 
European u, which had been weakened in Upsilon, as I shall 
shew in the next lecture. Perhaps the Athenians retained 
something of the o-sound longer than the rest of the Greeks, 

1 The history of these changes is elaborately traced by A. J. Ellis in his 
Early English Pronunciation; see especially pp. 92 and 104 

2 Curtius, Erlailt. p. 23. I may say in passing that modern Greek can 
be no guide to the pronunciation of the ancient tongue. If anything is 
certain, it is that the sounds of the old Greek cannot have remained un- 
affected by so many centuries. We might as well expect to see the temples 
and houses of Athens unimpaired by time, as to hear the exact accents of 
Pericles or Sophocles from the lips of a modern Greek. No doubt particular 
sounds may have been exceptionally preserved ; but as a rule incessant 
phange is the inevitable lot of every language. 



144 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

for we find ol fiev exoai racfro fjuepo^ in the inscription of the 
Athenians who fell at Potidaea, B.C. 432 \ It is not likely 
that this Ta(j)o is the Doric form of the genitive: rather this 
spelling shews simply that o was still predominant in the 
Greek ev. compound. The last diphthong ev is most difficult of all. 
No help can be got from the Latin, which had lost both 
eu and ou at a very early date. But the Greeks wrote 
Lucius as Aev/aos, perhaps on the analogy of Xeu/co?. Pro- 
bably the effect of the clear e would tend to turn the sound 
into oi, as it is in German; but this is really a diphthong. 

No doubt the second vowel of all these six diphthongs, 
where it preceded another vowel, passed into its correspond- 
ing semi-vowel y or w — from which indeed it had often 
originally sprung. On no other hypothesis can we conceive 
the possibility of sounding combinations like alei or evoi. 
Diphthongs The six diphthongs formed with a, tj and co need not 

with first • 

vowel long, detain us long. That at, rjo, coc soon became monophthongs, 
is evident from the nature of the sounds, for it is impossible 
to give the t more than the slightest effect after the long 
preceding vowel, and from the fact that the i was so early 
' subscript/ the symbol, though not the sound, being retained 
doubtless to avoid confusion between cases and persons 
which would otherwise have been identical. The other 
three av, rjv, cov can scarcely have differed in sound from 
av, ev and ov, and were as a matter of fact soon disused 
even by their inventors, though retained by grammarians 
for the sake of symmetry. 

Similar ^11 the diphthongs which we have described so far, arose 

diphthongs. L ... 

from the union of dissimilar vowels. What took place when 
similar vowels — a, e, o — met? Sometimes they became a 
diphthong, neither symbol being changed, but the two sounds 
tending more and more to coalesce into one (as in the cases 
above-mentioned), e.g. #eo?, &c. But this was comparatively 

1 See Thiersch, Gr. Gram. pp. 40 and 77 (Engl. Trans.). 



VIL] SUBSTITUTION. 145 

rare. As a rule the combination of sound was effected by 
the ordinary laws of phonetic change. The effort to produce 
two different vowels one after the other was too great, and 
therefore the difference was done away. The stronger vowel 
either sank into the weaker (Substitution) or assimilated it 
to itself (Assimilation). The two identical vowels remained 
for some time side by side : then they either coalesced into 
one long vowel, or by a further process of substitution, prin- 
cipally found in the Attic, the second vowel was again 
weakened, and so a new, and this time dissimilar, diphthong 
was produced. These changes are quite familiar to you all; 
they occur in every noun and verb you inflect. But since 
grammars do not generally give any principle for these 
variations, and merely call them "dialectical," I think it 
worth while to exhibit them in a connected form, in order 
that you may clearly see the causes to which they are due. 
I borrow the examples partly from Ahrens' useful work on 
the dialects, but principally from Leo Meyer's Vergleichende 
Grammatik 1 . 

The six possible combinations of similar diphthongs are 
a + e, a + o, e 4- a, e + o, o + a, + e. Those in which a is 
the final vowel rarely occur except in inflections. Now in 
all these cases we see in the different dialects sometimes 
substitution, sometimes assimilation, sometimes both. In 
order to treat them all together I shall be obliged therefore 
to bring in here my account of Greek vowel-assimilation, 
which I do with the less reluctance because it is only found 
in these combinations, and, as I have before said, is a very 
unimportant agent of phonetic change in Greek. The middle 
step is given as often as it occurs. 

1. a + e = a + a=d: as alrtaeaOac = alridaadcu 2 = alTiaadai. 
e + e = 7j : as evUae = ivUrj. 

This last weakened form is Doric (Theok. VI. 45; cf. oprj, 
1 1. 286—304. 2 II. x. 120. 

P. L. 10 



146 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

VII. 50, &c). In the first change the stronger a has assimi- 
lated to itself the weaker e ; in the second the e has been 
substituted for the original a. The same processes will be 
seen in all the other combinations. As in the first case, in 
Doric a+7) = a + d= a, as arjhwv — dScov (Mosch. III. 9). 

2. a + o = a + a = d: as aos (Attic eW) = a? (Dor. Aeol.), 

iira^aao = errata 1 , 

'AX/c/ubdcov = ^AXk/jlov, 

= o + o = ft) : as bpdcov = opccov 2 = bp&v, 
fcepao? = fcepoos, 

=z -\-v = ov: as Kpovl8a((ry)o = KpovlSov (At.). 

Similarly by analogy, 

a + ov = o -f ou = o +&>=&> : 

as yodovaa ^yoocoaa 3 =<yoco(Ta, 
yeXdovaa = yeXooocra 4, = yeXaaa, 
(but yeXdcra is also Doric, where the a has assi- 
milated the ov). 
Prom these two combinations it will be seen that breadth 
of sound is by no means necessarily the characteristic of the 
Doric as opposed to the Attic. In the second, indeed, the 
Doric and Aeolic a assimilate the o, and thus we see, for 
example, the broad KpovlBa and dv, instead of the Attic 
Kpovlhov and wv (from awv) : but in the first combination 
it is the Doric which substitutes e for a, and so gets the 
thinner sound ivUri instead of Attic ivLica. No doubt as 
a general rule Doric retained broad sounds, which were 
refined in the Attic so as to substitute elegance for strength; 
but this rule has many exceptions, which confirm the state- 
ment 1 have already made, that dialects are the result of 
imperfectly developed tendencies. 

3. e + a = a-\-a = a, esp. after a vowel : vyiea = vyid, 

= e + e = 7] : reiyea = Telyj), 

e-atcovaa = ijtcovaa. 
1 Theok. iv. 28. 2 II. I. 350. :} 11. xxn. 363. 4 Theok. i. 96. 



VII.] SUBSTITUTION. 14; 

This combination is rare. In Latin, as Leo Meyer 
observes 1 , it remains unaltered, as in aurea, doceam, &c. 
4. € + = + = 0) : as e-o<f>\ov = cb(p\ov, 





(f>iXio) = (j)i\a), 


= + v = ov : 


aS <f)l\€0/JL€V = (pt\0VfjL€V, 




yeveos = <yevovs, 


= e + v = ev: 


avreov = avrevv 2 , 



cpeos = opevs. 

The last change — to ev — is confined to the old Ionic of 
Homer, the Aeolic and the Doric. In the second — as in 
the third of (2), and again in the second of (6) — we see 
that when + come together the second sound sinks to v, 
especially in the Attic Greek. The second vowel has assi- 
milated the first to itself, and then, unable to maintain 
itself beside its self-created rival, it passes into the weaker v. 
The third modification, on the contrary, shews an immediate 
weakening of the second vowel, with no change of the first. 
It is especially frequent in pronouns, as aev, fiev, &c. 3 Of 
course it must not be inferred that the other change to ov 
was unknown in other dialects than the Attic : the e-sound 
was commonly too weak to maintain itself distinctly. 

5. o + a=a-\-a=d: as aifkoa = a7r\a, 

= o + o=(o: as 6¥ara = uZra, 

6. o + e = o + o=(i): as virvoev = vttvwv 4 , 

= + v = ov: as \6erpov = \ovrpov. 

The change of o + e to w belongs to the severer Doric ; 
the second is the regular weakening, and is found even in 
Doric as well as a>. 

AVlien the same vowel occurs twice, the natural result is 
clearly that the two should coalesce in one long single sound: 
as is the case in Kepara, tcepaa, tcepa ; yevecre, yevee, yk.vr\ ; 

1 Verg. Gram. p. 294. 2 II. xn. 160. 

3 e.g. Theok. in. 36 (Doric), xxix. 16 (Aeolic). 4 Ar. Lys. 14:i. 

10-2 



148 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

al86o$, alScbs. But just as when similar diphthongs had 
become identical by assimilation, the second vowel was weak- 
ened, especially in the Attic, so is it also here. Thus the 
combination e + e becomes in Doric and Aeolic r), and o + o 
becomes w : Xeye^ev is Xeyrjv, r Cmro{sy)o is Xinrco in both — at 
least in the severer form of the Doric, spoken in Laconia, 
Crete, Cyrene, and Magna-Graecia. But in Attic the case 
is different. In Attica the two vowels must in each case 
have been sounded as a diphthong, long enough to allow 
the second vowel to become weakened, to i and v respec- 
tively : Xeyeiv, lttttov, So also when the second vowel- 
sound is the mere prolongation of the first caused by the 
loss of a dental, or the dental-spirant s. Thus ei is the 
result in Attic (sometimes in the other dialects) of e + <r, 
e. g. elfjil for ea-fxi (Aeol. e/i/ii, severe Doric ?)/u, softer 
Doric elfjui 1 ) : of e + v, e. g. eh for ivs (severe Doric 779) : of 
e + vr y as Tvcfrdels : of e+ v6, as ireiaofJiaL for 7rev0-crofiai,. 
Again, o + B = ov, as 7rou? : o + vt — ov in Bovs. These are 
Doric as well as Attic ; the softer Doric however sometimes 
allows the second sound to drop altogether : as iplaSev for 
ipiaSe/jiev, not ipcaBrjv ; a/A7reXo? for d/j,7re\ov<z 2 ; and many 
others. In all these the sense of the original length of 
the last syllable was kept up by not letting the accent be 
thrown back. The Aeolic sometimes employs a pecu- 
liar change of its own by which the second o passes 
into 1 instead of v, as + vt = oi, in fopeoLai, &c. 3 On the 
same analogy the Aeolic alone has weakened the second 
vowel in a -f a, as Ta\ai$ for rakavs, ^aau for ^avrl : perhaps 
this analogy may even account for the odd form dvaicncw*, 
equivalent to Doric OvdaKco, Attic 6v>]<tkco; and AlcrioSos, "he 
that goes the lucky road," as the name Hesiod was explained 
to mean. Our general result seems to be that in these cases 

1 Alirens, 11. 318. 2 Theok. iv. 8, v. 109. 

3 Theok. xxviii. 11. 4 See Ahrens, 1. 96. 



VII.] SUBSTITUTION. 149 

the Doric almost always lets the vowels coalesce : the Attic 
nearly always weakens, sometimes too the Aeolic, thus pro- 
ducing real diphthongs, to be governed by the same laws which 
regulate those which originally sprang from dissimilar sounds. 
I thus conclude this very imperfect sketch of the history 
of the Greek diphthongs, a subject which (perhaps because the 
facts are considered to be already known) is not fully dealt 
with in any philological work with which I am acquainted. 

3. Latin Diphthongs. 

These, as I have already said, were once as numerous as 3 : AI=a\ 
those of the old Greeks. But at a very early age they dwin- AU=au, 
died into simple sounds. Their history has been fully traced eu ' ou ' 
by Corssen : the account here given will be little more than 
an epitome of his results. I will take the six diphthongs, ai, 
ei, oi, an, eu, ou in order. 

It would appear from inscriptions 1 that ai was sometimes (i) Latin 
retained, sometimes written as ae, from the third century 
B. C. to the latest times : but it was doubtless in every case 
pronounced as ae, whilst the older method of spelling was of 
use to distinguish the genitive singular 2 of the first declension, 
for example, from the nominative plural, which was written 
with ae. This rule however was probably never univer- 
sal : we find tabelai datai (nom. pi.) in the Epistola de Bac- 
chanalibus*, B.C. 186, &c. Perhaps the old ai may have been 
retained longer in the root-part of the word than in suffixes 
or prepositions : thus we find aides and aidilis in the well- 
know epitaph on L. Scipio, son of Barbatus, whilst on the 
Column a Rostrata of Duilius 4 we find prae-sens and praeda 

1 A usspr. 1. 182. 

2 The old termination of this case seems to have heen ay as; whence Sw. 
Then if the s were retained, the a absorbed the /, as in fa mil ids. Corssen 
however givea examples of ae8, all being female proper names (1. 184). See 
Schleicher, Comp. p. 558. 

:; Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum, Vol. 1. No. 19G. 4 lb. No. 195. 



150 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

(i.e. prae-hid-a — the same base as pre-he(ri)d-o). In the letter 
however of the consuls forbidding the Bacchic rites (quoted 
above), we have aedes, and aiquom. Clearly no fixed rule for 
the spelling can be given. Corssen however observes that in 
legal notices from the time of Gracchus to Caesar ae is found 
universally instead of ai : after which time ai began to re- 
appear : one result, we may suppose, of that restoration of 
archaic forms of which we have a specimen in Claudius' 
attempt to remodel the alphabet 1 . That the pronunciation 
of the diphthong was not unlike the German a, and our a, is 
shewn by the fact that it began by degrees to be written 
as e. It was so pronounced by countrymen 2 in the time of 
Lucilius, as we find from Varro, L. L. 7. 96, who quotes the 
forms Cecilius and pretor : while educated men preserved 
something of the double sound. Iu inscriptions after the 
Christian era e appears with increasing frequency : and an 
inscription dating 242 A.D. 3 , which presents the three words, 
Aimilius, Sabinae and Furie, would seem to shew that at 
that time the three forms could have the one simple sound 
of the Latin e. 

The same authority points out that ai was also weak- 
ened to i. This takes place especially in case-endings, as uiis 
from ma-is, &c. ; also in prae when in composition, as priua- 
tus, pri-mus, pri-die, priuignus (for prai-ui-genus) , &c; and 
generally in compound words, as occido from caedo, iniquos 
from aequos, inquiro from quaero. The middle form is some- 
times retained, e.g. exaestumo (Plaut. Merc. 566), pertaesus 
regularly. 
(ii) Latin In like manner the diphthong ei would seem to have lost 

its double sound at the earliest times of which we have any 
knowledge. When it occurs in root- syllables, as in deiu-o-s, 
leib-er, deic-o, ei-re, &c, all of which are found as common 
forms in the oldest inscriptions ; it arises from vowel-intensi- 

1 Tac. Ann. xi. 13. 2 Corssen, ib. p. 186. 3 Id. p. 188. 



VIL] SUBSTITUTION. 15 1 

fication, and must be presumed to have been, when thus 
consciously employed, a true diphthong. But from the very 
earliest date we find in inscriptions a simple i instead of ei. 
Thus in the epitaph 1 , quoted above, of L. Scipio, the " unus 
bonorum optumus," we find filios, not feilios : in the Up. de 
Bacchanalibus (also referred to before) we find scriptum 
(though screiptus occurs in many later inscriptions 2 ) by the 
side of deicerent and inceideretis : primos on the Col. Ros- 
trata 3 , though preimos (from praimos) is much commoner 4 . 
On the other hand we know from Varro and Quintilian that 
as early as the lifetime of the former the country people 
used e where we find i in classical Latin. Thus they said 
uella and speca, not uilla and spica: leber instead of liber 5 . 
There is every reason to suppose that this pronunciation is 
still older : leber would not be taken from liber, the form of 
spelling then becoming commonest, but from leiber : and 
if this e be as old as the i we find in inscriptions — for which 
supposition further reason will appear below — then undoubt- 
edly at the time of the First Punic war, ei can have been 
no longer a diphthong, but (as Corssen supposes) a middle- 
sound, between e and i, that sound of which Quintilian 
(speaking of his own time) says, * neque e plane neque i 
auditur 6 ." 

How old this wavering between e and i is in Latin may 
be seen from the inscriptions in places where there is no 
vowel-intensification, no ei to be taken as a common origin, 
in the verb- and case-endings. Thus for example in the 
epitaph of Scipio alone we find fuet and dedet by the side 
of cepit : fait and cepit occur in the epitaph of his father 
Barbatus : cepet and others on the Columna Rostrata. 
Besides these, but only in later inscriptions, so far as I 

1 Momnisen, Imcr. 32. 2 See Corssen, 1. 200. 

3 Mommsen, Inter. 19G. 4 Corssen, ibid. 

5 Quint. 1. 4. 17. ,; lb. I. 4. 8. 



152 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

am aware, we find forms in ei, as gesistei in the epitaph 1 
of Scipio the Flam en Dialis, and venieit in the lex Thoria 2 . 
Now this ei cannot denote anything but an ambiguous 
sound between e and i— the former the common sound in 
the mouths of common men — the latter becoming fixed 
by literary use : and the fact of this symbol being thus 
employed at a comparatively early period seems to me 
to shew that it must some time before have lost the double 
sound which it originally possessed, at least when it arose 
from vowel-intensification. The wavering between e and i 
is exactly analogous to the Greek variation, which we have 
seen above 3 . 

It is noticeable that ei is found as a middle step between 
ai and i, e.g. in the dat. plur. of the A-declension, incoleis 
for incola-is ; tabuleis in the lex agraria of Thorius men- 
tioned above. It occurs also much more commonly as a 
weakening from oi: thus ploirume is found in the epitaph 
of L. Scipio — a weakened form of the nom. plur. ploirumo-is, 
still further weakened in the classical plurim(e)i. The final s 
of the nom. plur. is found in eeis (Ep. de Bacch.) i.e. eo-is — 
in classical Latin ii: and how easily this ei passed into e is 
seen in the ques (= qui, nom. plur.) of the same inscription — 
which also contains eiis as a dat. plur.: and the Columna 
Rostrata has castreis for castro-is. Analogous to the plural 
queis and ques are the singular quoi, quei on the tomb of 
Barbatus 4 , classical qui: I do not know that que occurs : but 

1 Mommsen, No. 33. 2 lb. No. 200. See Corssen, i. 212. 

3 EI is sometimes found in Plautine MSS. and is then retained by 
Bitschl, e.g. Merc. 409, veis (for vis from volo); curabeis (id. 526); abet 
{id. 748). These manuscripts however have suffered too much from copyists 
to be accepted of their own weight as trustworthy evidence of archaic forms ; 
they may however confirm the surer indications given by inscriptions. (Seo 
Corssen, i. 207.) 

4 Mommsen, 30. It is wrongly written qui by Donaldson in the Varro- 
nianus (p. 261) : where however a very useful collection of inscriptions and 
other records is given. 



VII.] S INSTITUTION. 1 5 3 

for ho-i-c we have the classical hie and the common hec, both 
found on the tomb of L. Scipio. Ritschl retains in Plautus 
the locative forms herei (Mil. Glor. 59) and die septimei 
(Pers. 260) : but die crastini (after the MSS.) in Most 881. 

It seems probable then that ei was a middle sound be- 
tween e and i : that in the oldest times of which we have any 
record it inclined rather towards e, and continued to do so 
always in the mouths of the common people : from whom it 
passed into the Romance dialects : whereas the literary dia- 
lect substituted i for it. 

The history of the diphthong oi in Latin is at first the (iii) Latin 
same as that of at. It early passed into oe, being pronounced 
so probably as early as the First Punic war, at which date we 
find Poenicas on the Columna Rostrata 1 . But the old spell- 
ing was retained generally. We have no other in the old 
epitaphs, e.g. that of L. Scipio, which begins — Hone oino' 
ploirume, &c. Oe occurs regularly first in the lex Thoria 
(b.c. Ill), e.g. foedere against foideratei of the Ep. de Bacch., 
and it is regularly used in the laws given by Cicero, De Legi- 
bus, thus oenus, ploera, coerator, &c. (The case-endings also 
early suffered the same change, as evidenced by the well- 
known pilumnoe poploe (nom. plur.) of the Salian hymn). 
But a further alteration of this diphthong had begun as 
early as the lex Thoria, in which we find units, procurare, &c. ; 
plitres and curator in the De Legibus. Shortly after the 
beginning of the first century B.C. this wavering ceased 
and u appears as the regular representative of the diph- 
thong. Corssen 2 gives the process thus — oi, oe, o, ii, u: the 

1 The authority of this inscription is doubtful. It seems clear that it 
was not engraved us it now stands till the time of the empire; and it is 
questionable whether it was then faithfully copied from some older column 
(as Quintilian seems to have thought) or whether (as Mommsen thinks on 
internal grounds) it was the work of a " grammaticus aetatis Claudiaiiae." 
See the Corpus Inscriptionum, p. 40. 

- 1. 201. 



au. 



154 VOWELCHANGE. [Lect. 

stage u he thinks proved by the transliteration of some 
Greek words into oe, as Hoelas: u = Greek v : the full u was 
established, he believes, in the Augustan age. But probably a 
simpler passage was commonly effected thus — oi, ui, u\ 

01 is also weakened to % and e from very old times in 
case-endings, e.g. Barbati (gen. sing.) and ploirume (nom. 
plur.) on the epitaph of L. Scipio. In both these cases a 
middle step ei is probable (see p. 152). The same change 
may have taken place in radical syllables, e. g. uicus (by 
the side of olfcos)* and pomerium for pomoerium 3 . But uicus 
(ueicus) at least may be a regular example of intensification 
— the first step in the i scale, in which case there would be 
no Graeco-Italian voikos, but separate formations (of different 
steps) in the separate languages, 
(iv) Latin AU is the only diphthong which the Latin language has 
preserved, that is, in the generality of cases ; for here also we 
find a weakening — to — common in early times. It is observ- 
able however that the new form in never drove out the old 
one in au, but the two remained side by side. Thus we find 
aula weakened to olla, lautus to lotus, plaustrum to plostrum; 
among proper names we find Cloclius by Claudius, Plotus 
by Plautus. It does not however appear that the Romans 
availed themselves generally of these double forms (as the 
Greeks would have done in their place) to denote different 
modifications of the original idea. Differences indeed in 
proper names naturally lent themselves to distinguish dif- 
ferent branches of the same family : in some few other words 
also a change of meaning is perceptible : thus lotus was 
restricted to the original idea " washed," while lautus ex- 
pressed the result of the washing, with many minute shades 
of meaning. But aula and olla do not seem to have denoted 
different kinds of pots, or plaustrum and plostrum different 

1 See Curtius, Gr. Et, 646. 2 Corssen, 1. 202. 

3 Id. 1. 204. 



VII.1 SUBSTITUTION. 



DD 



shapes of carts : and the same is true in most other cases. 
We must then conclude that the different forms were used 
by different classes of people, and Corssen supposes 1 that au 
was employed by educated men in words where o was heard 
in the mouth of the countryman. This is borne out by the 
anecdote of Suetonius (Vespasian 22), which Corssen quotes. 
The homely Emperor was taken to task by the courtier 
Florus, for calling a plaustrum a plostrum: and retaliated 
next day by pronouncing his critic's name as befitted ears so 
polite — Flaurus. Naturally this distinction between the two 
sounds had this effect, that some words in which o was the 
original vowel — not merely a vulgar corruption — began to be 
spelt with au in the literary dialect. An example is auscu- 
lari (as in Plaut. Merc. 575, ed. Ritschl, and many other 
places). Here there can be no doubt that osculari is the 
true form : ostium and other words, derived from the same 
base os, are never spelt with au. But ausculari became the 
received form — perhaps on the false analogy of auscultare — 
to give a fashionable colour to so common a proceeding. 
Sometimes a false derivation may have helped to bring about 
the same result — or may itself have been only the result 
of the new spelling — as in aurichalcum, a word borrowed 
from the Greek o/oe/^;aX«:o?, and originally written with an o 2 . 

The diphthong passes regularly in classical Latin into o 
in composition. Thus we have suffoco (root fauc), explodo 
(root plaud). Sometimes it passes into u, as accuso (root 
caus), defrudo (root fraud). Indeed even frudavi (compare 
frus-tra) occurs in Plaut. Trin. 413, and this form together 
with dado, the proper name Clusius, and others, seems to 
shew that the change was not confined to compounds 3 . 

Somewhat analogous to the change of sound from au to o 
in Latin is the pronunciation of au in French — and in some 
parts of the North of England " law " is pronounced like lo. 

1 i. 167. 2 lb. a lb. i. 170. 



eu. 



ou. 



156 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

The common pronunciation of au in English is a weakening 
of another kind. 

(v) Latin The diphthong eu occurs very rarely in Latin ; it was 

regularly weakened to long u. The few examples — mostly 
proper names — where it occurs are in inscriptions, and have 
been mentioned 1 in the lecture on Vowel-Intensifi cation. 

There are a few Latin words in which eu occurs in 
compounds, as neu from ne-ue, seu from se-ue, neuter from 
ne-uter and some others. The pronunciation of these words 
by the Komans was probably not unlike our own. 

(vi) Latin The last diphthong has passed through much the same 
history as eu except that it lingered later in use. It is often 
found in the old inscriptions: Loucana is on the tomb of 
Barbatus, pious and ioubeatis in the letter concerning the 
Bacchanalia, iouranto in the Bantine table. U begins to 
appear in the inscriptions of the age of the Gracchi 2 . Thus 
in the lex Thoria iubeo and ioubeo occur indifferently; iudex 
and ioudex; iuro and iouro. Sometimes the assimilated 
the u to itself, and then further passed into u. Thus poplicus 
occurs frequently in inscriptions, beginning with the Ep. de 
Bacch., passing in the lex agraria Thoria into publicus. 
Similarly we find nountios, nontiatus, nuntius: and noundi- 
num (contracted from nouendinum) in the Ep. de Bacch., 
nondinum in the Tab. Bant., and the common nundinum 3 . 
Sometimes the weakened itself into u: so that the diph- 
thong passed through the stages ou, uu and then u as before. 
Thus souos, which occurs in the beautiful epitaph of Claudia, 
quoted by Mommsen (Rom. Hist. I. p. 60, Eng. trans.), 

Souom mareitom corde deilexit souo, 

1 See page 121. 

2 Lucios on the tombs of Barbatus and his son, which Corssen gives as 
examples of the weakening at a still earlier period, is more probably from 
Leucios. 

3 Corssen, 1. 171. 



VII.] 



SUBSTITUTION. 



*S7 



passed to suuos, and that to suos and suus. So also occur 
flouios, fluuios and flu-ere 1 * 



The following table gives the results of our discussion 
of the probable sound of the diphthongs: the new sounds 
being those which were either heard universally in classical 
Greek and Latin, or to which the languages were respectively 
tending. The equivalent sounds are to be pronounced as on 
the Continent : it is not possible in many cases to give Eng- 
lish equivalents. 



Original. 


Greek. 


Latin. 


ai 


a (English a, nearly) 


a or e, and I 


ei 


e and i (English a and e) 


e or 1 


01 


o, ii and i 


o or u 


aii 


au (English ou) 


au or o 


eu 


oi(?) 


u 


ou 


u (English oo) 


u 



It will be seen that in both languages the ^-sound on the 
whole predominated; except that in Greek it had a ten- 
dency to pass sometimes into o, sometimes into il, owing to 
the common weakening of the u. The a was invariably 
modified by the other vowel : * corrupted whatever sound it 
followed and perished after doing so; except when it comes 
after the weak e, when the battle was decided in favour of 
neither combatant, but they parted on equal terms. 

1 Corssen, i. 175. 



ion 



LECTURE VIII. 

VOWEL-CHANGE (continued). 

4. Weakening of U in Greek. 

U= u- The full u of the Graeco-Italian was retained by the Latin 
peoples, but weakened by the Greeks to the sound of the 
German u. This is the reason why in words borrowed from 
the Greek the Romans never employed their u to represent 
v, but borrowed the symbol y (T) as well as the sound. 
The fuller sound however was not lost to the Greeks: but it 
was denoted by the diphthong ou, which early lost its 
double sound; and was then employed in the Boeotian 
variety of the Aeolic dialect in words where all the other 
Greek dialects had suffered original u to sink to v. Thus in 
Boeotian we find jXovkov for jXvkv 1 : the quantity however 
is not different; which shews that the sound of ov cannot 
then have been double. In the fragments of Corinna we 
find also rov (in common Boeotian tovv) instead of tv or av, 
identical in sound with the Latin tu. So also we find ovfies, 
not v/juets (frag. 9), and (j>ovaa ($vaa) in frag. 12. This weak 
sound of v in the common Greek is clearly owing to the 
"muscular relaxation" which Max Miiller speaks of: the 

1 Ahrens, 1. 180. 



Lect. VIII.] S UBSTITUTION. i 5 9 

lips were not fully protruded. The French u is a similar 
example of weakened articulation: in England the weaken- 
ing is principally confined to the south; Cumberland is still 
pronounced by natives with the full vowel sound which we 
denote by 00: the tendency (as is always the case) is pro- 
gressive : it is not long since Russia and Prussia were called 
in England Roossia and Proossia: and already we sometimes 
hear put pronounced with the sound of u in but. 



5. Further Vowel substitution in Greek. 

We have seen that in Greek the original a is regularly 5. Spora- 
broken up into a, e, and o ; and that u is weakened into inGrwh' 
v or it. The sound of the original i remained unaltered. 
Beyond this there was little variation in the main body of 
the Greek language. A vowel of one scale never regularly 
passed into one of another scale. This took place sometimes 
irregularly, and generally in one only of the head-dialects: 
most commonly, as might have been expected, in the weak 
Aeolic. But this change never passed so completely over 
any one of them as to deserve the name of a phonetic law, 
even for that dialect. For example the weakening of a into 
v is most commonly found in the Aeolic. Yet that same 
Aeolic retains the a in words where the other dialects have 
suffered it to sink as far at least as the intermediate o; thus 
vira is the Aeolic form of viro — see Sappho, Frag. I. 9, &c. 
The change therefore cannot be said to be peculiar to any 
one dialect : nor yet to any class of words : sometimes, but 
not generally, it is explicable as produced by the influence 
of adjoining sounds. It is essentially sporadic — and as such, 
to be carefully distinguished from those regular vowel- 
changes mentioned above which have passed so generally 
over all the dialects, that they must be regarded as being 



160 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

among the characteristic marks which distinguish the Greek 
from its sister languages. 

I shall give the more important of the small list of 
words in which the Greek has suffered original a to pass 
into i or v 1 . 

(1) Weakening of a to c. 

(i) A = i. This will be found in most cases to have been helped by 

an intermediate e, which is kept in some forms of the word. 
Thus in iviinay for eV-FtV-Tw the a of the original YAK is 
weakened to i. But the gap is bridged by the form ( F)e7r-o? 2 . 
In other cases the Latin has preserved a Graeco-Italian e 
which has passed into c in the Greek: as in equos by t7T7ro?, 
Sanskrit agva, where the original a is seen. It will be ob- 
served in both these instances that the weakened vowel 
precedes two consonants — and this is generally the case — as 
in fclp-vrj-fjLi, (root KEP), wIt-vcd which retains in the 2 aor. 
eireaov the original vowel of IIET, and many others. Here 
the word was sufficiently strengthened by the combination 
of consonants to allow a weakening of the radical vowel. 
A further reason is found in many other verbs, such as 7rwrntf, 
r/iyvofiai, &c. ; here the original forms were irnrerco and 7*76- 
vo/juai: the t which seems radical in the contracted forms is 
really the vowel of a reduplicated syllable, the pronunciation 
of which was weakened as its origin became less distinctly 
felt. Sometimes the radical syllable itself has suffered as in 
dr-ir-aWo), and 6v-lv-rj-/ubL. In verbs where the reduplica- 
tion retained some of its significance the 1 became at last 
the formal vowel of reduplication, as in tl-6i]-/j,l, Sl-So)-/jli, &c. 
More examples of this weakening are to be found in the 

1 More examples may be found in Curtius (Gr. Et. p. 641, &c), Leo 
Meyer (Vergl. Gram. 1. 115, &c), and Schleicher, p. 58. 

2 This intermediate step is not ho-wevcr found in Sanskrit: where (in 
default of any e) many common words have the original a weakened at once 
to i, as pitar (father) ; duhitar (dwyarep) and others. 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 161 

Doric, and still more in the Aeolic. Thus [aria is Doric for 
ear la, where the Graeco-Italian e is warranted by Latin Vesta. 
The Boeotian has Icov for iywv, and crto? for 0eo?, &c. * ; so also 
the Laconian ; and we find the Aeolic irLavpes in Homer. 

(ii) Weakening of a to u. 

As between a and i an intermediate e could generally be («) ^ = w. 
traced, so here also a passes commonly into v through o. 
Thus the original nakt (night) passed through Graeco-Italian 
noct — which the Latin retained, before it reached the Greek 
vv?ct. Similarly ham (Sk. sam) is Latin com and Gr. avv. 
In the Aeolic, as mentioned above, words have often been 
thus attached, which the Attic retained unscathed ; as crrvfia, 
vfioios 2 , and the common Homeric dfjuv/xcov (/jlw/jlos). Many 
of these variations may have been produced (as Curtius 
points out 3 ) by the influence of neighbouring liquids or nasals, 
which from their semi-vowel nature more especially corrupt 
neighbouring vowels. The same author observes that words 
like fidp-rvp- compared with the cognate words ending in 
rcop, remind us of the parallel Latin weakening from da-tor 
to da-tur-u-s : the name of the Attic magistrate, the irpyravi^, 
is doubtless formed from irpo: as iru/maro? is from pos as 
found in the Latin po(s)ne 4 . 

The weakening of u to i seems sufficiently attested by a (iii) U=t. 
few examples — e.g. virep^lako^ from <&T. Compare the 
common vTrep-tyv-r,?, and the Latin sujier-bas, where the b 
corresponds regularly to <f> as the representant of original bh; 
ai-a\os from av-s, and some others 5 . It occurs however but 
rarely, and can hardly be considered as more than a very 
distant indication of the possibility of this change which 
became general at a very much later period — probably not 
before the 11th century 6 . 

1 See Aristoph. Ach. 808, 906 ; 'Lys. 81, 174, &c. Thuo. v. 77. 

2 Theok. xxix. 25 and 20. :1 Gr. Et. 644. 4 Id. p. 646. 
• r ' See Curtius, Or. Et. 648. 6 Erlauterungen, p. 22. 

P.T, 11 



1 62 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

6. Further Vowel Substitution (Latin). 

This has found place in Latin to a much greater extent 
than in Greek. We have seen above how fully even down 
to their most flourishing period of literature, the Greeks had 
preserved their original store of diphthongs, whilst the Latin 
at the age of Plautus had retained only one. We have also 
seen how vividly the distinction remained in the Greek mind 
of the three different vowel-scales, by the insignificant list 
of transitions from a to i or u, of which some of the more 
important have been given in the preceding section. The 
same precision must not be looked for in Latin. It has 
been seen indeed already that the distinction of scales was 
certainly received by the Italians from their forefathers of the 
Graeco-Italian age : for some few of the traces of modification 
of the vowels, each in its own scale, have been given above, 
and numerous others may be found in the first volume of 
the new edition of the Aussprache 1 . But that elaborate 
method could not be maintained in a language which suf- 
fered nearly all its diphthongs to degenerate into single 
Peculiar sounds. Indeed the most striking characteristic of the Latin 
the Latin language is the exceeding weakness of its vowel system. 
v t ™ el ' sys ' The vowels have no longer any life in them. They are often 
the mere servants of the consonants to which they cling, 
and from which they take their tone: never (as in the 
Greek) do they expel the consonants by their own fuller 
life and energy. The original vowel — the simple sound a — 
passed down every possible step of degradation : and this 
degradation — historically traceable on the stone and brass — 
has been not too fancifully connected with the gradual 
weakening of the Roman character. The spirit of the Ro- 
man grew weak as the breath upon his lips. 

The steps of this vowel-degradation have been arranged 

1 See especially i 2 , 348—628. This part of Corssen's work is almost 
entirely new. 



VIIL] SUBSTITUTION. 163 

by Corssen 1 in the following table, which is also given by 
Dr Donaldson 2 : 

A passes to U E I, 

passes to U E I, 

U passes to E I, 

E passes to I, U, 

I passes to E. 

From which table we see that while a retains its position 
as the primary vowel, never derived from any other, and 
while is only derived from a, the other vowels u, e, and i t 
are merely substitutes of stronger sounds, not indeed indif- 
ferently, but in accordance with no law of vowel-scales. We 
shall see hereafter that the decision, which vowel shall be 
taken, rests generally with the following consonant. The 
vowel-change does not originate with the consonants: it is 
caused, as has been already insisted on, by weakness of articu- 
lation. But the direction which that change follows does 
generally rest with the consonants. This will be clearly 
seen in the lecture on Assimilation, where I shall describe 
that vowel-change which arises from weak articulation, but 
is modified by the affinities between particular vowels and 
consonants. At present I shall describe such change as is 
due to simple weakening, where the effect of neighbouring 
sounds is at least not distinctly traceable. As however I Contrast 
have contrasted the vowel-system of the Greek and Latin, Greek and 
I may in passing give a few instances where assimilation l e atm ' 
has been at work, in order more fully to shew the differing 
genius of the two languages. They are cases where the 
Latin has borrowed from the Greek, and has changed the 
word, after it had become naturalised, to suit its own pho- 
netic laws. They are taken from different parts of Corssen's 
chapters on "Umlaut 3 ." He has treated the subject so fully as 

1 Ausipr. 1. 299. - Van. p. 318. :} 1. 236—327. 

11—2 



1 64 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

to leave little else to be done but to select examples from his 
stores. From them will be seen how rigid and lifeless, how 
dependent on neighbouring sounds, is the vocalism of the 
Latin, as compared with the Greek. Take the five words, 
Hecuba, crapula, catapulta, triobulus, epistula. The penulti- 
mate vowel in each is u. But when written in the original 
language — r ]&Ka/3r) and Kpanrakr), /caraTreXrrj^ and ofteXos, 
67nard\7] — we see three vowels, a, e, o. The reason is, as 
will be hereafter shewn in the chapter on Assimilation, that 
a labial and (more especially) I have a prevailing tendency in 
Latin to fix the preceding vowel (when weakened by some 
other cause) at u. Similarly i has an affinity to n, and 
e to r : firj^avr} and ftaXav&ov become machina and bali- 
neum ; (paXapa and reaaapa become phalerae and tessera. 
Indeed, before the suffix -ro-, hardly any other vowel but e 
is found, as in libero, aspero, &c. Contrast with this the 
varied abundance of the Greek /caOapo-, (f>o/3epo-, aX/ivpo-, 
Trovrjpo-, &C 1 When for ease of utterance, a vowel is in- 
serted between two following consonants of a borrowed 
Greek word, the vowel is determined by the following conso- 
nant. Thus 'A o-K\r)7TLo<z becomes Aesculapius: Spa^M and 
y A\Kfjir]V7] become drachuma and Alcumena in Plautus, be- 
cause of the labial nasal m. But fivd and Tkyyi) become niina 
and techina (Plaut. Capt. 642), because of the following n. 

I proceed to give examples of vowel-weakening, inde- 
pendent in the main of assimilating tendencies, under three 
principal heads — in formative elements (both formativu 
and inflectional suffixes), in composition, and in redupli- 
cation. 
(i) Weak- First then, in formative elements, we may see in the 
Normative nom. sing, o the Graeco-Italian termination of the base 
syllables, (itself weakened from Indo-Eur. a) in classical Latin weak- 
ened to u. We have filios Barbati — with the o — on the 

1 Corss. i. 273. 



VIII.j SUBSTITUTION. 1 65 

epitaph of Scipio. Similarly the neuter nom. ended in os, 
like the Greek genos, then genus : the is still seen in the 
gen. of many nouns, as corporis (for corpos-is) : though 
others have weakened it to e, as generis for genos-is. This 
os can also be traced in the case-endings. Thus in the Ep. 
de Bacch, we find senatu-os (weakened through senatuis to 
classical senatus), and corpor-us, which speaks of the older 
corpos-os ; compare yeves-os afterwards yevovs. That the u 
of the genetive plural is also weakened from is shewn by 
the form duonoro(in) = bonorum on Scipio's tomb : and the 
tenacity with which the Italian provincials still clung to this, 
as to other old vowel-sounds, is shewn, e.g. by the "loro" 
= illorum, of modern Italian. As Corssen well says 1 : "the 
peasant of the Roman campagna at this very day pronounces 
this genetive ending, as it sounded on the lips of the 
mighty Romans who twenty-one centuries ago wrote on the 
tomb of Lucius Cornelius Scipio that he was "the best of 
the good." Yet the tombs of the Scipios, father and son, 
shew that in written Latin the transition from to u was 
even then taking place : we have Lucius on the earlier, but 
Luciom and uiro(m) on the later. On the whole it would 
seem that was retained more commonly before final m, in 
the singular ace. and nom. of the neuter, and in the gen. 
plur. : while it gave way sooner to u before the case-ending 
s of the nom. sing. But this rule is by no means universal. 
After u the was regularly kept down till the time of the Em- 
perors, to avoid the repetition of the same sound. Quintilian 
says 2 that he was taught to write seruos and ceruos, but that, 
at the time when he wrote, the spelling seruus and ceruus 
had come in. It would seem that the educated Roman 
employed u instead of (and similarly i instead of e) in 
many cases where the provincial Italians at the same time 
used only the e and which they had received from their 
1 1. 210. " c. 7. 26. 



1 66 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

forefathers : and this weakening — which however, like the 
original division of a into a, e, and o, materially increased 
the force and precision of the written Latin — probably dates 
from about the 2nd Punic War. The older e and o are 
again to be seen in numberless inscriptions of the later 
empire, examples of which are given by Corssen, and so 
passed into the modern Italian and other Romance languages, 
which (as is now a recognised fact) must be derived, not 
from the classical Latin, but from the dialects of the pro- 
vincials. 

A curious analogy to this process is pointed out by 
Corssen 1 in the history of the Umbrian. This dialect would 
seem to have passed through the very same stages centuries 
earlier than the languages of the rest of the Italian stock. 
Thus in the oldest Umbrian inscriptions we find o corrupted 
to u as much as, and often more than, in classical Latin : 
we have puplum (popidum) and him (=con or cum). These 
date from a time earlier than the conquest of Umbria. But 
in the so-called New Umbrian — the monuments of which 
however reach back to a time older than the oldest Latin 
records— we again find the o : as in poplom and com. And 
Corssen' s hypothesis is doubtless correct, that the victorious 
Roman soldier carried with him into Umbria the old pro- 
nunciation of the vowels which was heard at Rome long 
after the subjugation of Italy, and which remained ever after 
the pronunciation in the conquered district. 

The connecting vowel in the conjugation of verbs has 
been regularly weakened in Latin from the original and 
Sanskrit a; e.g. Indo-Eur. bhar-a-mas, and Sanskrit bhard- 
mas. It has passed through the Graeco-Italian o, where the 
Greek halts ($ep-o-fJL€v), and rarely stays even at u (uolumus), 
but passes on to the thin i, as in ferimus 2 . This weakening 

1 i. 249, &c. 

2 The long a, e, and i of the 1st, 2nd, and 4th conjugation respectively, 
result from contraction. 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 167 

is doubtless due to the unsubstantial character of the vowel 
— the mere link between base and termination. Before two 
consonants, as -nt, -nd, the vowel has taken a somewhat 
different course. Traces of the are seen in the dederont of 
inscriptions, and quoted by Quintilian 1 together with probar 
ueront, as proofs that the Latin possessed this as well as the 
Greek : also in the uiuont, loquontur, &c. of Plautus, where 
the preceding u has preserved the 0. The next step u main- 
tains itself in ferunt, &c. but passes on, not to i, but e in 
ferentem and ferendum. From Corssen's examples it would 
appear that this fluctuation between u and e prevailed from 
the time of Plautus to the end of the Republic : when the e 
was definitely established, though it never expelled the u 
from legal or other formulae, e.g. hire dicundo, familiae 
erciscundae. The e in these cases is due to the fact that 
before two consecutive consonants the vowel sound is deaden- 
ed, as will be shewn below. Still in some formations (and also 
in radical syllables) where has been weakened to u, the 
process stops there, e.g. in Acherantem, homuncidus, &c, in 
hunc and nuntius; so also the u is retained in alumnus, 
columna, &c, and in arbustum and arbuscula — perhaps by 
affinity to m and s. E itself passes into the weaker u in 
diurnus for dies-nus, corap. hodiernus: r being a common 
Latin weakening from .9. 

In final syllables the original vowel commonly sinks to e: 
a fact which Corssen explains by suggesting that though i be 
a thinner vowel, yet e is the most suitable for terminations 
because in pronouncing it the organs of speech vary the least 
from their position when in perfect rest 2 . Examples will 
occur at once: the 3rd plur. perf, e.g. monuere has sunk 
from an original monueront, through the customary monue- 
runt: then the final nt was dropped by that weakness of 
articulating the final syllable, which is so noticeable in Latin, 
1 1. 4, 16. - 1. •!::',. 



1 68 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

and which will form the subject of a later lecture. Either 
form was in use indifferently in the last century of the 
Republic, and traces of the weak form are much older. 
Whether there was an intermediate i at one period, seems 
uncertain: Corssen 1 quotes an isolated dederi: which, toge- 
ther with dedrot and dedro, may serve to shew the great 
fluctuation of usage. In the 2nd sing., e.g. utere for uteris, 
the loss of s has led to the same result. So also in some 
nominatives of pronouns the final s has been dropped, and 
the vowel thus left defenceless has suffered the usual degra- 
dation: so ipse has an older form ipsus, and Me is doubly 
weakened from ollus. In the ablative, the loss of d has fre- 
quently caused a double form, as from marid, mari and 
mare ; the tendency was always to pass on to e, but the 
necessity of keeping the cases distinct often protected the i. 
In the later times of the Empire the cases became hopelessly 
confused : the dative — and even the genetive and accusa- 
tive after losing their final consonants — could sink into final 
e : thus Corssen 2 quotes Tebere for Tiberim, and mare for 
maris. But to notice all the corruptions of the late Latin, 
interesting though they be as illustrations of the process 
which led to the confusion of cases in the Romance languages, 
is beyond our present plan. In the accusative as well as in 
the ablative of the I-declension in classical Latin, we see the 
affection for e in the terminating syllable ; the e in fact was 
almost final, for the m was hardly sounded. Many words 
exhibit both forms : thus we have both nauim and nauem, 
turrim and turrem, with an increasing preference for the 
latter form. A few are found only with i, as sitim, uim and 
one or two others. Very rarely does the Latin avail itself of 
the double form to express diversity of meaning; thws partem 
is the regular accusative, while partim is used for an adverb, 
as are a very large number of old accusatives from extinct 

1 i. 70. 2 If 209. 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 169 

nouns in -ti, as raptim, statim, &c. The regular transition 
from i to e in the nominative of nouns in in-, e. g. nomen 
from base nomin, is probably also due to its being the final 
syllable. The original a is kept in Sanskrit ndma from base 
ndman. The e is kept in further compounds, as momen-tum, 
&c, because followed by two consonants. The last instance 
of weakening in case-endings which need be quoted is that of 
the vocative of nouns of the O-declension, w T hich is regularly 
weakened to e, as Postume. 

The lightness of the vowel i is shewn in the frequent 
change from e before suffixes. In the majority of cases this 
may be accounted for by the affinity of i to t and d. out 
there are plenty of examples which shew simple weakening. 
Thus pudi-bundus is from a base pude 1 , pati-bulum from base 
pate; rubi-cundus from base rube; and it was in all proba- 
bility first written rubecundus, like uerecundus, &c. A 
greater weakening is seen in domi-bus, uersi-bus, &c. from 
domu-, uersu- ; still greater in publi-cus from poplo- and 
popolo-, and indeed invariably before the suffix -co- . With 
this rigidity Corssen 2 contrasts the flexibility of the Greek 
— shewn e.g. in 'OXv/juriaKos and Orfkvicos. In uilicus, the 
vowel weakened is a itself. The other instances (they are 
numerous) of this weakening before suffixes will be given in 
the lecture on Assimilation, which acts as a modifying cause 
determining the vowel in each case. 

Next we come to weakening in Composition. 

First we will take those cases where the first member of (") Wecd- 

c/i/717 in 

the compound has suffered : in these the loss has generally compos*- 

befallen the last syllable of a substantive, and is analogous to " m " , 

. . . (a) of the 

weakenings just mentioned in the last section. Thus a i&fintmem- 

weakened to i in tubi-cen, causi-dicus, &c. : u to i in corni- compound, 

(jev, arci-tenens, flucti-uagus, &c; very frequently to i in 

armi-ger, fati-dicus, and many other examples given by 

1 Corss. 1. 291. 2 Ibid. 



1 70 VO WEL-GHANGE. [Lect. 

Corssen 1 . In all these cases the appearance of the light 
vowel i explains the nature of the change : it was the striving 
for lightness of form which caused the weakening. Sometimes 
though rarely we find e instead of i as in bene-volus, male- 
ficus, &c. ; where Corssen 2 believes rightly, as I think, that 
the first member is the noun not the adverb : for the change 
of the first syllable will be mentioned under Assimilation. 
In these cases he also thinks that the e is later than the *, 
which is found in the MSS. of the comedians : this seems to 
me uncertain. At all events it appears 3 that in many words 
the provincial Italian retained the older e where it passed in 
the written language into *: the compounds above given 
may therefore be instances where some accidental cause has 
presented a more original e } in the literary as well as in the 
spoken language. 

So regular had the use of i at the end of the first part of 
the compound become, that even words taken from the 
Greek have their spelling altered to suit the rule. Thus, as 
Corssen points out 4 , names borrowed from the Greek comedy 
as Ar)/jLocf)Gov and Arj/juvoaeXrjvr] become on the Latin stage 
Demipho and Lemniselene; rpajoKcoixcolla itself is presented 
as tragi-comoedia; and at a later day, on the same analogy, 
the great MidpaSarrj? was known at Rome as Mithridates. 
(b) where Secondly, let us take the more numerous and important 

member is cases where the second member of the compound has suffer- 
weakened. ed With thig wea kening of the Latin the Greek has no 
sympathy. The Greek shews singular facility in the com- 
pounding of verbs with prepositions : and these numerous 
compounds in process of time often ceased to be felt as such, 
and were used to express some one simple idea which had 
no apparent connection with the original meaning of the two 
members ; yet the Greek language seems never to have lost 
its consciousness of the truly composite character of the 
1 1. 295. 2 1. 277. s 1. 29G. 4 Ibid. 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 171 

word: even though the meaning of the verb might be over- 
powered by the preposition, yet its form remained intact. 
Very different was it with the Latin. Here, as is obvious 
on the slightest glance, weakening is the rule; when the 
original form is retained, it is the exception. The primary 
vowel a which we have seen elsewhere so rarely affected, is 
here the greatest sufferer of all, as indeed follows from its 
occurring in roots more frequently than any other vowel. 
When followed by a labial or I (comp. p. 164), it sometimes 
does not sink below u: thus we find oc-cup-o {CAP) con- 
tubernium {TAB) ; in-sul-to {SAL) and in-sidsus from salsus. 
But even the labial is commonly unable to stem its down- 
ward course: the older forms de-rupio and sur-rupio 1 , gave 
way to deripio and surripio: and hosts of others, such as 
prohibeo, mancipium, dissilio, &c, will occur to every one. 
Before final consonants other than labials, the radical vowel 
sinks as a rule to i: before gutturals, as re-ticeo {TAC), pro- 
digium {A G) ; before Unguals, as profiteor {FAT), Jupiter, 
or Dies-piter; before nasals, as recino {CAN) and inimicus. 
Further if the vowel be followed by two consonants as well 
as preceded by one at least, the vowel regularly sinks to e, 
as in the examples given above (p. 167). In all these cases 
sufficient strength is supplied to the syllable by the com- 
bination of consonants : and therefore the original vowel 
is suffered to sink to the dull e, unless retained at some 
intermediate stage by especial affinities. Thus we have 
peregrinus from ager, obsecro from sacer; ascendo and aspergo 
from scando and spargo; but infringe* and contingo from 
firango and tango, because as Corssen points out 2 , the nasal 
here is not radical; it is only employed in the formation of 
the present base from the roots FRAG and TAG. (See 
above, p. 93). Damno in composition becomes condemno, 
from annus we have biennium; castas passes into incestus, 

1 Corssen, 1. 314. - 1. 317. 



172 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

tracto into detrecto; from base CAP we get auceps, &c, in 
the nominative. In some isolated cases, as imbecillus, we 
find e without the excuse of the two consonants : others like 
aequi-perare and per-petior, may be accounted for by the 
affinities to be hereafter mentioned. E itself is weakened to 
i in numerous compounds, where it had taken the place of 
original a in the root: thus lego is colligo in composition; 
from tenax we get pertinax: but e is often retained, on no 
very clear grounds, except that these two vowels, as the 
weakest in the language, exchange place more easily. Corssen 
can give but one instance of o being shortened in composi- 
tion, which is illico from in loco. U is never shortened. 
There are a few seemingly irregular instances of weakening 
of long vowels in composition, but always to e or i. Thus 
halo passes into anhelo; long o is weakened to short i in 
cognitus and agnitus, and long u to short e in de-iero, pe-iero, 
bat retained in per-iurus. Lastly e passes into I in two 
cases — subtilis from tela, and delinire from lenis. 

It has been already mentioned that these weakenings 
although very common, are by no means without exceptions. 
The prevailing tendency never became universal; and this 
in most cases is to be accounted for by the sense of the 
composite nature of the words being retained. Sometimes 
we can see a reason for this, sometimes not. Thus pro- 
hibere acquired the general idea of preventing, losing the 
primary sense of holding a material obstacle "in front:'' 
hence comes the weakening in form. But, either because of 
the stronger form of the preposition, or for some other 
reason, the primary sense of post-liabere was felt even when 
used in cases where no putting behind in space was possible: 
and hence the retention of the original vowel. Again Diu- 
pater passed into Jupiter without preserving a trace in 
common use of its derivation: but the title Janus-pater was 
felt to be a compound from the use of its first member as a 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 173 

distinct word; and therefore the a never sank to %. And 
the idea of causation, which is obviously represented by com- 
pounds with facere, as tepefacere, &c, prevented the sinking 
of the vowel, which takes place in conficere, &c. In other 
cases I believe that assimilation has been the cause of many 
irregularities. This explains why the a maintained its place 
in per-placet, but not in dis-plicet; in per-facilis, but not 
in dif-ficilis. Another reason, which Corssen has pointed 
out 1 , by which the change has been prevented, is the neces- 
sity for distinguishing between distinct compounds. Thus 
expando was not allowed to sink into expendo, because of the 
necessity for keeping it distinct from the combination of 
ex and pendo: so also it was necessary to distinguish con- 
taction from contectam. But this principle explains a very 
small number of instances. 

Lastly, we come to Weakening in Reduplicated forms. (Hi) Weak- 
This process (as Corssen observes) is closely connected ^^SecT 
with that just described: for Reduplication is really a sort of firms: 
Composition. In the weakening of the syllable produced by rcdwpli- 6 
Reduplication, the Greek and the Latin are on the whole in cat * d s V l ~ 
accord. Thus in the formation of present bases the vowel 
found in the new syllable is regularly i: we have gi-gn-o 
in Latin, as well as ji-yv-o/jbai in the Greek ; si-st-o as well 
as i'-ar-Tj/jU. More examples have been given in the lecture 
especially devoted to the uses of reduplication. So also in 
the formation of the perfect the vowel regularly used in 
each language is e: ri-rvcp-a and ire-TroiO-a stand by ce-cid-i 
and te-tul-i: though it must be allowed that there is much 
less uniformity in the Latin than in the Greek here; the 
Latin employs the radical vowel in the new syllable not 
infrequently; not indeed the heavy vowel a, but 0, as in 
l>o-posc-i and mo-mord-i, a in pu-pug-i and cic-cnrri, and 
the weak i is kept in perhaps the only two verbs with 

1 1. 320. 



I ;4 70 WEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

radical * which have retained the reduplicated syllable, 
di-dic-i and sci-soid-i. But the strong tendency towards a 
uniform use of e is shewn by the other forms which were 
not uncommon in classical Latin — pepugi, peposci, &c. We 
may infer then that the tendency to regard these new sylla- 
bles as mere grammatical forms was strong even in Graeco- 
Italian days : and that while the Greeks after the separation 
attained to strict uniformity in this matter, the Italians 
advancing no further, formed their tenses now on one prin- 
ciple, now on another: from which inconsistency we find 
in our grammars the anomalies of the " irregular verbs." 
It is difficult to trace with certainty in Latin the process 
by which the reduplication was often altogether dropped. 
Corssen thinks 1 that it began with the compound perfects: 
that in these by the " Old Latin law of accentuation" the 
accent fell on the first syllable, e.g. re-tetulit, and thus 
forced out the e of the reduplication-syllable; whence 
re-t-tulit. (Compare the French "je ne le sais pas," 
where the e of the ne is lost in pronunciation.) Thus the 
ear grew accustomed to such possible forms as tulit and 
when the "new law of accentuation" came in, and the 
accent was thrown forward in such words as tetulisti, the e 
again slipped out and left t-tulisti, tulisti; and in analogy 
with these accomplished facts, the possible tuli also became 
actual 2 , 
(b) of the The Latin treads its own peculiar path of degradation 

Tabled Sy ' when it weakens the radical syllable as well; when it allows 
e.g. pe-pag-i (root PAG) to sink into pe-pig-i. The same 
fate has befallen numerous verbs with radical a — cado, tango, 
&c. In other cases, chiefly when two consonants follow, e 
is found instead of i, mfefelli, and peperci, and in other cases 

1 i. 326. 

2 I shall have occasion in a subsequent lecture to explain Corssen's views 
respecting accentuation in Latin. 



VIII.] SUBSTITUTION. 175 

by reason of some affinity, as to the r in peperi (root PAR). 
Sometimes the radical vowel seems to have been lost alto- 
gether as in feci, i.e. fe-faci, then fe-f-c-i; that the verb 
was really reduplicated in the first instance is shewn by the 
Oscan fefacust (i.e. fecerit) and fefacid (i.e. fecit), quoted by 
Corssen from Mommsen's Unteritalischen Dialekte. This 
weakening of the second syllable he thinks analogous to that 
of the second member in a compound (pe-pigi, im-pingo), 
and produced by the same reason, the resting of the accent at 
one period upon the first syllable. It must be confessed that 
a good deal of work is thrown by Corssen upon the accent. 



LECTUEE IX. 

VOWEL-CHANGE (continued). 



Vowel* g £ ar we have seen the results of simple substitution upon 
modified by fas vowel system of Greek and Latin. A stronger vowel 
causes; has passed into a weaker one in accordance with a regular 
scale of vowel-strength, differing indeed for the two lan- 
guages, but constant in each. Before we look at the cases 
where this substitution has reached its natural limit — loss, 
let us see what modifying causes may have sometimes stem- 
med, sometimes altered this downward progress : what influ- 
ence other sounds, vowel or consonant, may have exerted in 
particular cases upon a vowel, which when no such influences 
were at work simply sank lower in the scale. 
hardly at As j have before said, we shall find no such modification 

all in 

Greek; of the Greek vowels. They were too strong to become the 
mere reflex of a neighbouring consonant. In them was 
manifested all the vital energy of the language. The nearest 
approach to such action is that which we have seen when 
two vowels were thrown together by the loss of a consonant, 
or by other means. Then we saw that one vowel could affect 
another, but very rarely did one of the two (strictly speak- 
ing) either assimilate or dissimilate the other: it did not 



IX.] VOWEL-CHANGE. 177 

change the other into a new distinct sound more like, or less 
like to itself : rather the two became blended into one, after 
a severe contest, in which the stronger gained the day, but 
generally retained the marks of the conflict. And even so 
the agent of the change was a vowel and not a consonant. 

We may pass on then to the Latin, and see the results oibutfre- 
the weakness of its vowel system, compared with the Greek. Latin. 
We have seen that the scale of vowel-strength in Latin is 
this — a, 0, u, e, i : that is, a vowel allowed to sink gradually 
in strength, and not interfered with by other causes, would 
pass along this scale from a to i. And this order down to a 
certain point is always preserved. The vowel a is always 
the original vowel : it is never derived from anything else : it 
passes into by weakening of articulation, and further down 
the scale. But neither nor any other vowel ever rises, by 
assimilation or by any cause whatsoever, to a. Similarly 
sinks to u, e, i : but u, e, i never rise to 0. These two vowels 
then retain their dignity in Latin as in Greek; they are 
never the creation of the consonants. But here the differ- 
ence in Latin begins. While the difference in strength be- 
tween a and was clearly felt, that between u, e and * was 
not so : and between and u there was a great gulf fixed. 
Therefore these last three vowels occur often not in their 
regular order but in dependence upon other sounds, through 
the principle of Assimilation. The difference in strength 
between the three vowels was not sufficiently great to make 
a particular divergence from the scale offensive to the 
" Sprachgefiihl" : not only could a vowel which was gradu- 
ally passing down the scale be stemmed at a particular point, 
as at u, by a labial before or after it; but even a weaker 
sound such as e, the result of old substitution for (i, can be 
carried backward up the scale to u ; as PEL to pulsus: the 
effort required to pronounce u was qoI bo much greater than 
the effort required for 3 as the effort to put the vocal organs 
p. l. 1 2 



178 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

in the position for e with the uncongenial letter I imme- 
diately following was greater than the effort to sound the 
closely adjacent sounds u and I. 
Principle For the great cause of Assimilation is closeness in the 

lation. ' air-tube of the points at which the two sounds — that which 
affects and that which is affected — are produced. By the 
air-tube I mean the passage from the lungs to the lips : and 
the air proceeding along this tube can be acted upon at par- 
ticular points, thus producing the different vowels. Eegarded 
from this side — priority in time of production — the order 
of the vowels is that under which they commonly appear — 
a, e, i, 0, u; if we sound them as they are sounded in other 
countries, not according to our insular pronunciation. And 
thus regarded we shall see that e may (more or less exactly) 
be called a palatal vowel, % a dental and u a labial. There- 
fore we shall not be surprised to find that these vowels can 
have affinities for those consonants which are produced at 
corresponding points of contact : we shall not be surprised to 
find that if there be no very marked difference of strength 
between the labial and dental vowels, the labial vowel should 
be found in preference in connection with a labial consonant, 
and the dental vowel with a dental consonant. And this 
result is just the result to which the facts of the language 
will lead us. It is quite true that in these cases the Latin 
law of vowel-strength sometimes seems to be broken; it is 
not broken in reality but only over-ridden for a time by a 
stronger law, itself also a manifestation of the universal prin- 
ciple that phonetic change results from .the striving for ease 
of sound : and the Latins in consequence of the weakness of 
the lower part of their vowel system, found it easier to sound 
a stronger vowel together with a similar consonant, than a 
weaker vowel together with a dissimilar consonant 1 . 

1 It may perhaps be thought that this natural scale of the vowels — a, e, 
i, 0, u — ought to be the scale of strength also for all languages. It would be 



IX.] ASSIMILATION. 179 

With these introductory remarks I pass to my second 
head of Vowel- Change. 



II. Assimilation. 

Under this head we may consider together the cases lm y owe i 
where the process of descent has been stemmed, and where it a j SVimla - 

r tion caused 

has been altered by neighbouring sounds. I take first those by conso- 

, , . nants. 

examples w r hen these results are produced by consonants. 

(i) Where the vowel in w r hich the change results is u. «\ t j ie 
If we take first the connecting- vowel, which was com- vowel * 
monly in Graeco-Italian and which of all vowels was most 
likely to sink to its lowest form (see p. 166), we shall observe 
that in some few verbs in Latin it was retained at the point 
u by the influence of the labial-nasal m, as sumus, volumus: 
but in other verbs which bear a strong resemblance to these in 
that oldness of form which at a later period seems a mark of 
irregularity, we find the u already thinned down to i, as feri- 
mus: — just as in other simple verbs 1 . Here therefore the vowel 
was kept, for some time in an early period of the language, 
at u by the assimilating effect of the m. A similar effect — also 

so, if every vowel was— as a is — merely so much breath. To sound a we 
simply open the mouth and send a strong current of air from the lungs. 
But all the others depend on the different organs which lie along the air- 
tube. It is according to the effort with which the requisite mechanism 
is applied, that a particular vowel is strong or not; and different nations 
pronounce different vowels strongly, from certain idiosyncracies into which 
it is probably not very profitable to enquire. But it is surely not very 
difficult to see that the constrained position of the lips in sounding the o 
demands more effort than the slight curvature of the tongue which alone 
is required for sounding e (English a) or i (English e). Therefore according 
to our definition o is naturally a stronger sound than e or i. 

1 By simple verbs I mean these which belong to the so-called 3rd con- 
jugation. In the other conjugations d, e, i are part of the verbal base — ama, 
mone, audi — and make a connecting vowel unnecessary. The concluding 
vowel in each case is the relic of the Indo-European suffix -aya, or -ya, altered 
partly by the corruption of the y t partly by the splitting of the a sound. 

1 2—2 



I So VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

not permanent — was produced by / in the days of Plautus, 
when sacro-ficus stopped at sacruficus 1 , before passing yet lower 
to sacrificus, or cami-fex rose to carnufex. So also b produced 
bu-bus, and Hecuba, the older form of which was Hecoba 2 . But 
the consonant which has by far the greatest affinity for u is I. 
This affinity moreover was in full operation during the classi- 
cal period of Roman literature : it differs from those men- 
tioned above which had then almost died out. On the other 
hand it would seem to have begun later : for we read cosol 
and consol on the tombs of three of the Scipios : while the 
introduction of the new sound is shewn by the wavering 
spelling u or o indifferently — on inscriptions of a somewhat 
later date. Corssen has proved that the new sound was esta- 
blished among educated men at the close of the Republic, 
but that it never became general among the provincials, from 
whom the original o was handed down to all the Romance 
dialects ; just like the provincial e for i mentioned already. 

The principal reason of this effect of the I was undoubt- 
edly, as I have already said, the fact that u and I are pro- 
duced very near together in the air-tube. Other causes may 
have combined. L was generally a strong sound in Latin : 
it is said by Pliny 3 to have had a middle sound at the 
beginning of a word, as lectus ; to have been strong at the 
end of a word — sol, or a syllable — sihia, or after a consonant 
in the same syllable, as clarus. (Hence no doubt the fre- 
quent loss of such consonant or consonants, as (c)lamentum, 
(st)locus, &c.) He calls it weak only when it follows another 
I, as ille. This seems to shew that the sound of the first I in 
such places was so strong that a second one was felt to be 
required to express it : hence the constant variation in 

1 e.g. Most. 243. 

2 Quint, i. 4. 16; see Corssen, i. 254, where these and many other ex- 
amples are given. 

3 See Corssen, i. 79. 






IX.] ASSIMILATION. 181 

writing, as Aquilius and Aquillitis; also the occurrence of two 
Vs where etymologically there should have been but one, as 
querella and perhaps relligio (but the first I here may be an 
assimilated d), or one I instead of two, as paulum, belua, 
solennis. But besides being a strong sound, it also had 
(like r) something of the vowel about it. In Sanskrit there 
occurs a vowel li, also a vowel ri : and we shall see hereafter 
that it was this slightly heard Vowel in these two consonants 
which led to the loss of original vowels before them, as in 
vinc(u)lum, and dext(e)ra. Hence it cannot be surprising 
that a vowel before I had a natural tendency to turn first 
to u. 

The I was especially powerful when followed by another 
consonant, in which case the preceding vowel was nearly 
always altered to u — the vowel which under the circum- 
stances required the least effort to produce. Thus a passed 
into u, as flavus and ftagro into fulvus and fidgor, when 
through the strong dislike of the Italians for a heavy conso- 
nantal beginning, the I as the second consonant was thrown 
further onwards in the word : e became u very much more 
commonly, as pello, pulsus ; sepelio, sepultus, and a host of 
others ; compare too the Latin mulgeo with the Greek o/neXyco : 
o almost equally often as colo, cultus; stolidus, but stultus ; and 
compare bulbus with /36\/3o?, sulcus with oXkos. Indeed the 
flexibility of the Greek vowels in the same position is best 
seen by Corssen's examples 1 of words taken from the Greek 
by the Italians at an early period, and pronounced and 
written after their rule : thus TraaaaXos becomes pessulus, 
StVeXo? is Siculus, cfxiivoXrjs is paenula. 

N combined with another consonant has the same effect 
as I, in detaining tin; preceding vowel at the step u. Thus 
nuntius, Acherun(ti)s, liunc, diminutives like ratiuncida, con- 
tractions like homullus (from Jiomouulus), are all instances 

1 i. 258. 



1 82 VO WEL-CHA NGE. [Lect. 

of a vowel which has fallen from 0, but no more than one 
step. In the same way mn detain the u in alumnus and all 
that class. That the nasals were the cause seems clear 
because before two consonants a vowel in Latin commonly 
sank to e. The cases are not on the whole very numerous, 
and it would seem that the tendency was strongest in pre- 
Augustan times, and then rather ceased, for Ennius wrote 
frundes, and Lucilius dupundi Among the provincials the 
o-sound was probably often retained, and passed on to the 
Romance language, e. g. molto, mondo, &C. 1 
(ii) the (ii) Where the vowel in which the change results is e. 

This result, as will be inferred from the previous account, 
is produced especially by r, the most cognate of the conso- 
nants. This is most conspicuous in the ■ cases of neuters 
ending in us (os), where between the two vowels s passed 
into r, e. g. genos-is became genoris and then generis. In 
other cases original i rises to e from the influence of r : as 
ciniSy cineris. Next, Corssen quotes the terminations ber, 
cer, and ter, the vowel of which in Indo-European was cer- 
tainly a 2 . The uniformity of the vowel before the termina- 
tion ~ro- (~ero) has been already contrasted (p. 164) with the 
easier Greek vocalism. Lastly, in the conjugation of verbs e 
is always attracted by r, which in Latin seems to have had 
a peculiar sound ; so dedi-sont passed into dede-runt s . 

I mentioned above that e is the favourite vowel of the 
Latin in closed syllables before more than one consonant, as 
vertex (from vertic-) sceles-tus from scelus, pedester for pedit- 
ter(p)-, and numerous others. This combination even caused 
a further weakening of u, as ferentem, &c. (contrast euntem) ; 
the old u being retained in legal formulae. The reason of this, 
it seems to me, lies in the dulness of the vowel: it has the 
least amount of character of any ; and therefore it best suits 

1 Corssen, 1. 257—264. - 1. 274. a 1. 276. 



IX.] ASSIMILA TIOiV. 183 

a syllable in which the consonantal element is strong. Prof. 
Heyse's character of e may be assented to without difficulty; 
with respect to the other vowels his conclusions are so inge- 
nious that one cannot but wish that they were borne out by 
facts. Of e he says that it is the vowel of least " tone :" it 
expresses less of sensation than any other, and consequently 
extends its dominion over speech with ever-increasing force, 
as the exponent of reasonable speech : colourless as water 
it serves as the element to float consonants : it is the voice 
of emotionless reasonable speech 1 . 

(iii) Where the vowel in which the change results is i. (iii) the 
It may seem needless to treat of this vowel as the result 
of assimilation. If i be the weakest of the vowels, it must 
be the point to which all vowels would sink if left to their 
own course, without any modifying influences. It may be 
said on the other side that i is not invariably the weakest of 
the Latin vowels : there are cases in which i has sunk to e, 
as we have already seen, at the end of a word, or when the 
final consonant was so little heard that the vowel was really 
final. But I do not think that in any of these or similar 
instances i has been kept back by assimilating influences 
from sinking to e. The assimilation therefore in this case 
must be understood to be no more than the result of affinity 
between i and other sounds which generally compelled a 
vowel to sink as low as it could in the scale — which it 
might not have done, had no such influence been at work. 

The sound which had this effect most was n. The thinnest 
nasal preferred the thinnest vowel. According to Corssen 2 , 

1 Heyse, System der Sprachwissenschaft, p. 79. I owe my knowledge of 
this brilliant writer to Mr Farrar's Chapters on Language. In the chapter 
from which the above is quoted, he distinguishes the vowels as the natural 
exponents of different sensations : a distinction which it is to be feared has 
perished in a far pre-historic stage of language, at least for the other vowels. 
See Cliapters on Language, p. 86, note. 

■ 1. 94. 



1 84 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

who rejects Priscian's rule that final n was strong, medial n 
weak, n was strong in the middle of a word, at least 
where it was an element of either base, or suffix : it can 
hardly have been strong in a prefix, such as con, when it 
generally vanished. Corssen instances the various spelling 
of words like Porsena or Porsenna to prove his theory; just 
as the strength of medial I was inferred from the same rea- 
son. If this be so, we can understand why n, which is a fine 
clear sound if pronounced with distinctness, would naturally 
draw to it the finest and most distinct of the vowels. But 
undoubtedly the nearness of the points at which the two 
sounds were produced has also much to do with the fact. Both 
are dental, and we shall see that i has an affinity for other 
dentals as well. The i occurs before n in terminus (Greek 
-/JL6VO-), in diutinus, where the suffix is the Indo-European 
-tana ; regularly before the suffix -no, as in dominus, pagina, 
&c. : it supplants o in oblique cases from bases in on, as 
cardo{n), cardin-is ; and occurs in a few radical syllables, as 
in Minerva for older Menerva, and vindico (compare venia) \ 
This tendency to substitute i for e, as we have already seen, 
was the mark of cultivated, as opposed to rustic, Italian. 

7" was also attracted to the dental spirants. The best proof 
lies in the transliteration of Kco/jid^co by comissor (the double s 
required to represent f may have had a peculiar force here) 
or KavacrTpov by canistrum; here again we have two dentals 
at work. An important example is furnished by the termina- 
tion of comparatives, -ius for older -tos. Here the i was some- 
times absorbed by the u, as in minus : but more commonly 
the u itself sank to i, which then coalesced with the pre- 
ceding i, and should therefore have produced a long final 
syllable in magis, satis, &c. ; but the weak pronunciation of the 
last syllable in Latin seems in every case to have let the long 
vowel pass away 2 . Lastly, i occurs in connection with t and d. 

1 Corssen, i. 283—285. 3 i. 288. 



IX.] ASSIMILATION. 185 

The instances where this assimilating power is best seen are 
the participles or participial formations from the second conju- 
gation, as meritus from mere- (but meretod occurs in the well- 
known epitaph of the son of Barbatus), tacitus from tace, 
&c. The same change is seen sometimes though rarely in 
the first conjugation, as domitum, cubitum, &c. In these cases 
accent no doubt had much to do with the weakening : the 
unaccented middle syllable could not maintain its length, 
and the shortened vowel easily sank to i. The fact that i is 
always found before the suffixes -tion, -tia, -tat, -tudin, -do, &c, 
should perhaps not be pressed as an instance of assimilation, 
for we have already seen (p. 169) that in all such formations 
the final vowel of the base has a natural tendency to sink to 
i as the easiest vowel, e. g. in belli-cus, rubi-cundus, &c. 

In conclusion then, the three weak vowels have their 
own peculiar affinities, u for labials and I ; e for r and closed 
syllables ; i for dentals : these affinities in every case depend- 
ing on the nearness of the point of contact of the two sounds. 

Next we have to consider the cases where one vowel 2. Vowel 
has assimilated another. This phenomenon is of compara- turn caused 
tively rare occurrence. We have often had occasion to J vowels - 
remark the weakness of the Latin vowel-system : conse- 
quently we shall not expect the vowels to exercise so strong 
an influence over another vowel as the consonants did. Still 
I can give you a few examples derived as before almost 
entirely from Corssen. 

(i) When two vowels come into actual contact, they 
have a tendency to approximate to each other. 

Thus when y was resolved into i in (e)syam, the subjunc- 
tive of ES, the difference in point of distance between the 
two vowels i and a made the form siam unpleasant : hence 
through the influence of the i, the a drew one step nearer 
to it, and became e — siem, a form which constantly occurs in 
Plautus (e.g. Capt. 736). That a really occurred in this form 



1 86 VO WEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

in Latin, as well as in Graeco-Italian or Indo-European, is 
shewn by those cases where the y was entirely dropped, not 
resolved into i, when the a remained intact; as in reg(y)am. 
Similarly Corssen holds 1 that the difficulty of the combina- 
tion ia produced the numerous class of secondary nouns in 
-ies, e. g. durities by the side of duritia. 

Another effect of this assimilating influence of one vowel 
on another is to check in some cases the same power when 
exercised by a consonant. We have seen already that o 
followed by I almost always sinks to u. But this change 
does not take place when i or e precede o : u is more distant 
than o from either of these vowels ; and they therefore by 
their assimilating power retain the original o in uiola, gla- 
diolus, &c. ; in aureolus, luteolus, &c. 2 

(ii) When two vowels are separated from each other by 
a consonant, they tend to become identical. 

Thus e assimilates a preceding vowel in bene, originally 
bono, which by regular weakening became bone; then the 
feeling of the coming e in the last syllable modified the o in 
the first. Similarly illec-ebrae owes the e of its second sylla- 
ble (root LIG) to that of the third. 

has changed u and e in a previous syllable, in soboles 
(sub) and socordia (se). So also u has operated in the suffix 
of tug-urium on the vowel of TEG. I think it possible that 
the same influence may have produced diurnus (dies), and 
arbustum (arbos). But more numerous are the cases where i 
has affected a preceding vowel. Thus ne-hilum becomes 
nihil : the old i in mihi is preserved by the final i, though 
in mei, mens, &c. it has become e. SUL in consulo passes 
into sil in consilium, facul becomes facilis ; and CAL, which 
is found in KaXvirray and calim (the old form of clam accord- 
ing to Festus), becomes occulo, but super-cil-ium. A for- 
ward action is clearly to be seen, as I think, in difficilis and 

1 i. 303. a lb. 



IX.] DISSIMILATION. 187 

displicet (see p. 173) : i is not found in perfacilis and per- 
placet, where no i precedes. 

it is quite clear from these examples that by far the Apparent 
greatest part in this kind of assimilation is played by the 'tfaVowdi. 
vowel i — the weakest of all : a fact which may at first sight 
surprise us. Corssen 1 gives the analogy of a, 6, u in German, 
which are commonly produced by an i in the following syl- 
lable : e. g. maim, mannlich : and he concludes that i, thin 
though it be, requires for its pronunciation a considerable 
tension of the organs of speech, differing herein much from e. 
This explanation seems very unsatisfactory. It is this effort 
required in pronunciation, and nothing else, which is the 
mark of a strong vowel : and yet nothing can be plainer 
than the fact that i is weaker than a, 0, or u. And certainly 
no such tension is absolutely required to sound the i, though 
greater power may accidentally be applied to it, as it may 
also to e. The truth is that the real cause of the change is 
not the influence of the i : the real cause is the natural ten- 
dency of every vowel to grow weaker in Latin : the i only 
lends a helping hand, determining how far the change 
should operate — in this case to the utmost possible limit, 
sometimes giving an additional impulse to the vowel affected, 
which might otherwise have resisted the primary tendency, 
as difficilis, mentioned above. In a word, it is only a modify- 
ing, at most an auxiliary cause of the change : and this is in 
accordance with the view of Assimilation which I have 
throughout this section attempted to set before you. 



III. Dissimilation. 

Tli is principle has of course a less wide field than that 
which we have just considered. The same sound is less 

1 1. 307. 



1 88 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

likely to occur twice in inconvenient proximity, than differ- 
ent sounds. Like Assimilation it is sometimes an auxiliary 
cause of new change, sometimes it prevents the regular pro- 
cess of change. Its operation is restricted to some of the 
places in which either by regular substitution, or by the loss 
of a letter, or by the resolution of a semi-vowel into a vowel, 
or by the addition of suffixes to roots or bases, or by two of 
these causes combined, the same vowel-sound occurred twice. 
Less fre- , It acts, I say, only in some of these places, because the most 
operation: obvious method was to let the two vowels so meeting coalesce 

mliy a^a' into one lon £ vowel : and tnis often took place. For exam- 
bar to pi Gj w hen sequ-ontur was tending to become sequ-untur by 
7 e. the regular substitution of u for o, since the double u would 
have been difficult to pronounce, the two often coalesced, 
and (q never being written after the loss of its peculiar 
attendant u) the result was sec-untur, when the tendency to 
weaken o to u in these forms had become too strong and too 
universal to be resisted. But the natural dislike to such a 
transformation is seen in the fact that the old spelling 
sequontur was still retained even in the Augustan age, side 
by side with the new r . Similarly we find in indifferent use 
equos and ecus, aequom and aecum, quom and cum, &c. In 
all these cases this retention of the o, this bar to the regular 
change, is due to the principle of Dissimilation. In some 
instances no doubt this principle was aided by another cause. 
If the weakening of o to u had taken place, and the two 
vowels had then coalesced, there would often have resulted 
much confusion. Thus uoltus would have been allowed to 
sink into ultus; uolnus into ulnus, &c. Here therefore there 
was all the more need for letting the natural tendency to 
Dissimilation act fully. 

Corssen gives as examples of this bar beside the well- 
known uolt, uolcanus, &c, the cases where original o is 
retained in the suffix -olus, which generally sank to -ulus ; 



IX.] DISSIMILATION. 189 

as friuolus, Scaeuola, &C. 1 The combination uu seems to have 
only been tolerated when another vowel followed, in which 
case the secoDd u was of course really the semi-vowel v, 
and there was no real meeting of identical sounds, e. g. in 
illuuies. 

The meeting of i with i occurred more frequently : e. g. 
from the resolution of ei into % as petiei, petii ; uieis 2 , mis. 
Here the combination was allowed because contraction 
would in such cases have produced immense confusion : but 
where possible it was permitted. Thus when De-is became 
Bits by weakening, it was at once shorter; ed into Bis; and 
genitives like Vergilii were also contracted, except when a 
poet found the older form more convenient. Frequently the 
difficulty was avoided by dropping one of the vowels, as 
obicio, adicio, &c. 3 

But when the difficult combination arose from the meet- 
ing of the end of a nominal base with a case-suffix, or even 
a new formative suffix, then dissimilation stepped in and 
prevented the occurrence of the sound. One of the two 
vowels became e ; thus ali-inus became alienus. Similarly 
when e would naturally have sunk to * in the last syllable of 
the root, it was retained, as in abietis, not abiitis, and 
Anienis from Anio(n), though from cardo(n), as we saw 
(p. 184), we have cardinis. So also in the formation of a 
secondary noun we see the same influence. Although before 
-tat, bases in regularly allow the to sink into i (as from 
uero-, ueritat-), yet if i precedes, the does not sink below e, 
as in pie-tat-, uarie-tat-, and many others 4 . The root AG is 
frequently used to form a sort of causal verb ; in which case 

1 1. 308. 2 See p. 152. 

3 At a somewhat late time if we may judge from poetry. Thus Virgil 
(Aen. vi. 420) has obiclt offam ( = obyicit), but Lucan (ix. 188) Pompeiumque 
deis obicit. Yet in Virgil we find reice scanned as a dissyllable, which could 
not bo if each i was heard. 

4 Corssen, 1. 310. 



iqo VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. IX. 

the vowel naturally sinks to % or is altogether lost, e.g. 
leuigare, pur(i)gare, obiurigare 1 and iur(i)gium. But when i 
precedes, this vowel was kept at e, as uariegare. Lastly, the 
older form of the genetives ipsius, illius, &c. is to be ac- 
counted for on this principle. We have seen the u occurring 
in forms like corporus (p. 165), a weakening of Graeco-Italian 
-os. But this u regularly sank to i, and consequently we 
might have expected to find ipsiis or ipsis: the change was 
prevented by the preceding i\ 

Finally, the combination ee is avoided in eeis by the forms 
eis or ieis, both in the nom. and the dat. or abl. plural. And 
the only reason apparently why we find the one relic of the 
older form of the present participle, so often mentioned, 
euntem, is that if the usual weakening took place in it, we 
should have a double e sound. 

These, with a few others of the same class, are the main 
examples of Dissimilation — a principle which (as will have 
been observed) acts almost exclusively in hindering weaken- 
ing which, but* for it, would on the analogy of similar forms 
have certainly taken place. 

1 In Plautus, Trin. 68, ed. Brix, though Fleckeisen reads obiurgito, not 
so well, I think. 

2 Corssen, i. 312. 



LECTURE X. 

VOWEL-CHANGE (continued). 

IV. Loss. 

We have now to return for a short time to the Greek, i- Loss of 
As the last two forms of change had little effect on the vwds. 
vigorous vowel-system of the Greek, it is only natural that 
it should have suffered still less from loss. Indeed the only 
class of words in which a vowel is dropped with any regu- 
larity is in those verbs which formed their protracted-stem by 
reduplication. In these the radical vowel commonly fell out. 
Many of the cases have been already mentioned; as <yi-y(e)v- 
ofiai, fML-fji(€)vco, 7r/-7r(e)T-&> 7re-</>(e) /;-&>, &c. This loss is one Probably 
reason for believing that the accent in Greek was not origi- by greater 
nally regulated by the length of the last syllable, but was^/^f 
free to fall as was natural on whatever syllable more es- at an 

. . earlier 

pecially modified the original idea — here therefore on the jwiod. 
first : for had it been on the radical syllable always, as would 
be necessary under the later law — e.g. /m-/j,€vq), — it is almost 
inconceivable that the accented vowel should have been 
suffered to drop. It is quite true that this view is not free 
from objection, though less so, as I think, than any other. For 
example it may be asked how it happened that if the accent 



192 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

was always on the reduplicated syllable, the vowel was yet 
regularly weakened to t? We may answer that it is less 
remarkable that an accentuated vowel should be weakened 
than that it should be lost : but this answer allows the 
difficulty. It is hardly conceivable that the accent should 
have been originally on the radical syllable and remained 
there after the reduplication sufficiently long to allow the 
new syllable to be weakened regularly, and then — after the 
importance of that syllable had so far faded out of the 
consciousness of those who used it — should have been thrown 
back on to it, and so the radical vowel have been lost. It 
would destroy the very principle of the theory, that there 
was a natural connection between accent and sense, if we 
should thus suppose that a syllable could be accented after it 
had lost its meaning, in times when accent had not yet 
become bound by quantity. Some other explanation must 
be found if this theory is to be maintained. May the change 
of the vowel in the reduplicated (and accented) syllable have 
been due to dissimilation as well as to weakening? We 
have already seen in words like <yeyova how the Greeks 
avoided the occurrence of the same vowel in consecutive 
syllables. As the vowel in the radical syllable was nearly 
always e in those verbs which formed their protracted-stem 
in this manner, the choice of l for the vowel of the redupli- 
cated syllable would thus be explained : it gives a variation 
in sound, but the smallest possible. 

The theory of the original freedom of the accent is 
maintained by Corssen in the third division of his work on 
the Latin language — that which deals with accentuation — 
the Betonung. It is true that this part is open to many 
objections : it contains more of hypothesis and less of facts 
than the Aussprache and Vokalismus : and difficulties, such as 
that mentioned above, are not met. Still on the whole his 
theory seems to me more satisfactory than any other. It is 



X.] LOSS. 193 

confirmed to some extent by the Sanskrit verbs which are 
analogous to those which we are considering ; for at least in 
the singular they are accented on the reduplicated syllable. 
The augment too is accented in Sanskrit ; as on this theory 
it could not fail to be, if the augment was originally (as 
seems highly probable whatever may have been its meaning) 
an addition from without, and alien to the verb, and so 
differing in kind from reduplication, which added no new 
element to the root. So this principle, if true, would explain 
other losses in Greek which occur in augmented tenses, but 
not so regularly as in the present : I mean cases like e-a(e)^-ov l 
from the root £EX or 2XE, and kairo^v for i-ae7r-o/nr)v; where 
the rough breathing was probably a mistake, on the analogy 
of the present eVo/xat and the imperfect efVo/xr/^; in this last 
the breathing was misplaced, the process being i-cre7r-6fi7]v, 
eeTrofJirjv, ieTrofJirjv, elircfji^v. 

Lastly we find a vowel sometimes lost in formative 
suffixes before a case suffix, e.g. 7ra7-(e)p-6?. The fact that 
the e does not fall out in the accusative where it is accented, 
whilst the genetive and dative have the accent on the case- 
suffix, seems to point again to accent as the cause of the loss. 
But why the accent was on the suffix in the genetive and 
dative alone, is not so easily answered. Was the accent 
originally on all case suffixes — as modifying the radical idea '. 
and was it then commonly thrown back from the natural 
tendency in all languages — less felt in Greek however than 
in most — to shorten a final syllable ? But, I confess myself 
entirely unable to explain why particular cases like Trarpos 
still kept it unchanged. 

Examples of loss in Latin are much more numerous — 2> Loss f 
another proof of the weakness of the Latin vowel system r ^''' h: 
compared with the Greek. They are so various that it is 
difficult to bring them under general heads. Perhaps the 

1 Schleicher, Camp. 57. 
P.L. 13 



194 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

best plan will be to give a list of the most important, and see 
afterwards what general conclusions may be drawn from 
them. For the examples I shall again be indebted to Corssen. 

Lois of a; First even the strong vowel a is lost not unfrequently in 

the perfects of the first conjugation 1 — e.g. cub(a)ui, nec(a)ui, 
&c. There can be no doubt that these perfects were formed 
like others of the same class from the base, cubd, need, &c, 
by the addition of ui the remnant of fui 2 : and it is not 
probable that this termination was joined directly to the 
simple root, in which case there would have been no loss of 
a. In all likelihood, as Corssen suggests, the weakened 
supine cubit am, where the reason for the i lies in the dental 
t, led the way to cubiui and then to cubui. In nouns this 
loss is rare : but uirgo must be a shorter form of uirdgo : in 
clams and clamor the root was doubtless GAL : and Corssen 
points to palma and cupressus, which represent the Greek 
7raXa/jb7j and Kvirapicrcros. 

Lose ofo; The loss of o (I take the vowels according to their 
strength) is even more rare. We find uict{p)rix, alt(p)rix, 
pist(o)rina, &c, where the new suffix has forced out the 
vowel of the old. Similarly neptis comes from nepotis : 
Corssen suggests through a middle form nepitis on the analogy 
of homo (n), hominis. 

loss of u; The next vowel — u — is only lost before I: and I have 
before said that I has something of the vowel in itself. Thus 
uinclum, as is well known, occurs at least as often as the 
older uinctdum even in the Augustan age. Others like 
poclum, uelviclum (Plaut. Pers. 775, 782) do not seem to 
occur in the literary dialect later than the Plautine age, till 
poclum is found again in Prudentius 3 . These "syncopated 
forms " when they occur in Latin verse-authors are generally 
explained as *' poetical license " — a radically false theory, if 

1 Corss. ii. 2. 2 See Schleicher, Comp. 828. 

3 Corssen, il 6. 



X.] LOSS. 195 

it means that Virgil and Horace used forms which ordinary 
men of the time could not have used. The truth is the very 
opposite of this statement : a pronunciation of uinculum and 
similar words in which the u was either barely heard, or not 
heard at all, was the universal pronunciation of the day : it 
was one of the regular weakenings of the popular use, which 
can be distinctly traced upon inscriptions through many 
centuries, and always on the increase : which was also pre- 
valent among the different Italian dialects. Educated men 
of Virgil's day laboured to restore the u ; and there can be 
no doubt that one effect of the Augustan literature was to 
stem to some extent the general corruption of the language 
as shown in this and numerous other ways. Only these 
writers did not -entirely debar themselves from the forms in 
daily use. Therefore their use of these vulgar forms was an 
infringement of their rule as poets, not such an infringement 
of some stricter non-poetieal standard as is implied by the 
term "poetic license." The u also fell out almost regularly 
in the secondary suffix -ulo, when preceded by n, or r, which 
then assimilated themselves to the following I, and so pro- 
duced the terminations, -ello, -Ulo, -olio, -alio ; e.g. ocellus (for 
ocululus), stella (for ster-ula), homullus (for homonulus), corolla 
(for coron-ula), stilla for stir-ula: sometimes -ulo was added 
to a word in which it already occurred, with a similar result; 
as pupillus for pupul-ulus (that is pupulo + ulo), oscilhnu 
from osculum, &c. ; see the long lists given by Corssen \ 

Just as u fell out before I, so e was lost before r; es-Zo«o/< 
pecially in the suffixes -ero,-bero, &e. Thus we have lib(e)vi, 
cap(e)ri, inf(e)ra; late-b{e)ra and numerous others. Simi- 
larly the suffix -tero is weakened to -tro and then often to 
-tri as in equestri-s, &c. : so also ac-ero becomes ac-ri-s. And 
the same weakening which we have seen in 7raT(e)po? is 
found in pat(e)ris, also in ag(e)ri, pig(e)ri, &c. These arc 

1 11. 10—14. 

13—2 



196 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

common and well known. Rather less obvious is the loss of 
e in salictum; compare coryletum, quercetum, &c. This vowel 
is also lost in perfects, like a above : as deb (e) id 1 . 
Loss of i; But the loss of all these vowels is small compared with 

that of i, the thinnest of all the vowels and most likely to 
die out ; both when it was radical, and when it was the 
substitute for a stronger vowel. From the long list of its 
omissions 2 , it seems capable of falling out of almost any 
place. Thus it disappears before c in calx (calic-) ; before g 
in pur(i)gare, iur(i)gium (see p. 190) ; before d in cal(i)dus 
(the true form of Augustus' day on the authority of the 
Emperor himself 3 ), ual{i)de, u{ni)dus, gau(i)deo (but gaui- 
sus) ; before t incessantly, as miser (i)tus, often in Lucretius in 
words which the next generation of writers did not allow 
to be contracted, as pos(i)ta (i. 1059), (though the com- 
pound re-vos(i)tus is a favourite both of Virgil and Horace, 
and demands the weakening by its length) ; in al(i)tus, 
quaes(i)tor, audac{i)ter, &c; in the old verbs fer{i)t, est (i.e. 
edit), uol(i)t; (that is to say, if these forms did really employ 
the connecting vowel analogously to the other persons — 
ferimus, &c.) ; before m and n at the beginning of numerous 
suffixes, as summns for supimus, bruma for breuima, teg{i)men, 
sig{i)num (whence sigimdum or sigillum), alum(i)nus, &c. — 
for the Graeco-Italian e in these formations probably passed 
through i before it was dropped, on the analogy of terminus, 
&c. ; before s in comparative suffixes, if Corssen be right in 
his very ingenious suggestions that, on the analogy of magis, 
satis (i.e. magius, saiius, see p. 184), so also mow is a neuter 
comparative from mouoc-ius (root mov), whence mouoc-is and 
mo(u)oc-s, the % being dropped before the s; also that uix = 
ui-c-ius, a comparative of ui-co, an adjective formed from uis 4 ; 

1 Corssen, 11. 20. 2 Id. 21—42. 

3 Quint. 1. 6, 19. The Emperor may at least be evidence to a form, even 
if he, like Sigismund, could not create it. 

4 See Krit. Beitracje, p. 02. 



X.] LOSS. 197 

as also the forms als, ex, ids, su(b)s, &c, where the s is diffi- 
cult to account for, and this (conjectural) explanation seems 
to me more probable than any other. It is certainly con- 
firmed by the superlative forms in -sto (the Greek -iaro) : these 
are probably only the comparatives intensified by the ad- 
dition of the pronominal base -to; then the i is traceable 
in pra-is-to or praesto "near/' as "most before" you; it is 
lost in iuxta for iug-is-ta "most joining on" and ec(i)sta. 
The i is also lost before s as before t in verbal forms like es, 
fers, &c. Much more numerous and important are the cases 
where i is lost in verbal formations before s, when another 5 
precedes, which after the loss of course coalesces with the 
other. Such forms are dixti for dic-si-sti; which occurs 
very frequently in the comedians, but not again in literature 
till the Silver age. Similarly the subjunctive perfects 
fixim, for fefaci-sim 1 , ausim for ausi-sim, the futura exacta 
facso for fefaci-so, occepso for ob-cecapi-so, the pluperfects 
ex-stinxem for exstinxi-sem, uixem for uixi-sem, and the 
infinitives dixe, traxe — all shew the same loss. Schleicher 
indeed objects to these formations on the ground that the 
second s between two vowels must have become r and the i 
before it changed to e, as actually did take place in fecerim, 
which certainly followed the common Latin rule. Therefore 
he assumes (Comp. p. 831) an older and a younger formation; 
and that in the older the suffix was added directly to the 
root, asfac-sim. This I think is improbable from the very 
periphrastic character of these tenses : compare the passive 
factus sim, where the first part is recognised as a complete 



1 Corsseu assumes to account for these forms an indicative perfect faxi, 
i.e. fac + si, a later form and distinct from feci whence fecerim (=feci-sim). 
Such perfects no doubt often occurred: but here I prefer to derive both 
forms from a reduplicated perfect, which occurs in the Oscan, fefaci. This 
can be weakened in two ways, one as in the text, the other by dropping the a, 
through the accent being on the reduplicated syllable — f<'f{'i)ci, fe(f)ch feci. 



1 98 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Leot. 

word, not a mere root or even a base : and I think that the 
weak * coming in the third syllable after a strong explosive 
sound would scarcely be heard ; and so the necessity for 
changing s to r would not be felt : afterwards when fe- 
faci had sunk to feci the i would be more distinctly heard 
and affect the following s more. The history of these 
forms is the same as that of uinelum, &c., mentioned above : 
they are found constantly in the comic writers who re- 
present the pronunciation of ordinary life, and they were 
doubtless heard in ordinary talk in the Augustan age, 
and are therefore sometimes but very rarely used by Horace 
and Virgil. The other conjugations, the 1st, 2nd and 4th, 
could form their futurum exactum and subjunctive perfect 
in the same way from the earliest times down to the 
days of Ennius and Plautus, but not much later. Thus in 
Plautus we have amasso (i.e. amaui-so, which regularly be- 
came amauero), seruasso, prohibessis (i.e. prohibeui-sis or 
prohibueris). Here it would seem that the loss of the u as 
well as the i led to a compensatory doubling of the s. 
I is espe- The cases in which the vowels have fallen out in compo- 

cially lost 

sition are sufficiently numerous and peculiar to deserve a 
short separate notice 1 . The stronger vowels indeed did not 
fall out under these circumstances, at least without first 
sinking to a lower sound : co-ago doubtless first became coigo 
on the analogy of red-igo, &c. and so passed to cogo. And 
most of the instances in which o seems to have fallen out, 
appear to me rather cases of contraction, e.g. quorsum from 
quo-uorsum, where we have a sliding together of the double 
uo, than an elision of either : this is true also of prosa for 
pro-uorsa, and Corssen's assumed mouox ; of co(i)uncti and 
ho(i)ornus where the lost letter was y; in all these cases 
the vowels which met were the cognate o and u which easily 

1 For a fuller lint of examples, see Corssen, n. 42 — 51. 



tn com- 
pounds. 



X.] LOSS. 199 

united. The loss of u is singularly rare ; it is apparently 
confined to the last syllable of manic in compounds like 
man(u s suetus, man(u)datus, &c. : the length of these words 
rendered the loss of some part inevitable, and therefore thp. 
unaccented vowel was naturally the first to go. The loss of 
e and i is common enough. Thus e is lost in ol[e)facio, 
nuncupo, i.e. nomen-cupo, posse for pot(e)se: in numerals 
often with a consonant, as quin(que)decim, sept(em)ussis, &c. 
Its loss in the reduplicated perfects is well known, e.g. in 
rec(e)cidi, ret(e)tuli. In all these cases the first part of the 
compound has suffered : the loss has fallen on the second 
member in prae(7ie)ndo, co-u(e)ntio (which finally sank to 
contio, like noui-uentitis to nuntius), in bi-{ge)nae, mali-g (e)nus 
and numerous others. The loss of i is commoner still ; e.g. 
au(i)-spex, nau(i\fragus, un(i)-decim, sinciput for semi-caput, 
officina for opi-ficina, pau(ci)-per, sti(pi)-pendium and others ; 
in the second part of the compounds, as su-r(i)go, co-(i)mo, 
iur{i)gium, prae-(i)tor, indu-(i)tiae, iubeo for ius-hibeo, &c. 

What is the immediate cause of this vowel-loss? We Are these 
know that the general cause is the general principle of all t Tiose°ofthe 
phonetic change. But why did these particular syllables ?m ,? c ?f^ 
suffer to such an extent, while others in the same word get 
off scot free ? It is difficult not to reply (as Corssen does) 
that the cause must be the Accent. The syllable which lost 
the vowel must have been the unaccented syllable. Then 
how far is this a priori decision confirmed by the facts of the 
Latin language ? In order to clear up this point Corssen has 
instituted an elaborate inquiry into the laws of the Latin 
accent, which occupies pages 201 — 400 of the second volume 
of his treatise on the history of the language. I have 
already alluded to this part of his work at the beginning of 
this lecture ; where I said that these results did not seem to 
me to be as certain as those of the earlier portions of his 
book. Since however they are at least probable, and if true 



Common 
law of ac- 
centuation. 



200 VO WEL-CHA NGE. [Lect. 

have an important bearing on this part of our subject, I 
will give them here very briefly. 

Corssen believes that there was an older and a younger 
law of accentuation in Italy, as well as in Greece. For the 
latter law he has the good authority of Priscian and Servius. 
The former rests on a large'number of particular forms in 
both languages, which will not fit in with the law in use at 
the flourishing period of their respective literatures : I will de- 
scribe the younger law first, as being certain ; and then state 
the main points in which Corssen's assumed earlier law differs 
from it. 

By the rule then of the Roman literary period, 

1. Monosyllables 

(vowel naturally long) are circumflexed : res, fons, sol, fles. 
short ... acute : mel, cor, fax, nox. 

2. Dissyllables 

(last vowel long) acute : Romae, sollers. 

short, first short 1 , acute : arma, deus. 

long, circumfl. : Roma, donum. 

3. Trisyllables, &c. 

(penult, short) acute : ascia, postulas. 

long, by position, acute : puella, tegentes. 

nat. and last long, acute : pudicae, audisses. 

short, circ. : lectica, civilis. 



The circumflex or " broken high tone," as Corssen calls it, 
was not the same tone throughout : prima erecta rursus in 
grauem flectitur, as Servius defines it. And this sinking of 
the tone is doubtless the reason why it is never found sepa- 
rated from the end of the word by more than one short 

1 That is naturally short, and lengthened (for prosody) only by position. 
Natural length is either radical as in stare; or the result of vowel-intensifica- 
tion, as ducit, or of contraction, as amas. Mere length by position, in words 
like vox, arma, &c. must be distinguished from this. 



X.] LOSS, 201 

syllable. Its natural place therefore would seem to be at 
the very end. Yet so little was the Latin inclined to accen- 
tuate the last syllable, that the circumflex is never found 
upon it in dissyllables, except when the original last syllable 
has been wholly or partially lost, as in tllic(e), credon(e), and 
the similar nostrd(ti)s, audi(ui)t. 

Loss therefore may be expected in unaccentuated syl- 
lables : that is, on all original final syllables (which as we 
shall presently see did suffer most severely) ; in the syllable 
immediately before the accented syllable (and we have 
already seen the loss of the vowel in many such; in c(a)larus, 
c(a)lamor, te.xt(o)rina, pist{p)rina, discip(u)lina, lib(e)rare, 
fab(e)rica, pat(e)ronus, cer(e)ritus, cal(i)care, pur(i)gare, teg- 
(i)mentum, or at least in the simpler forms from which 
these are derived); and in the penultima. wh en /b^oztmz^ the 
accent (as we saw in pal(a)ma, uinc(u)lum, peric(ii)lum, 
lib(e)ri, ded(e)rot, no(ue)ram, quaes(i)tor, uol(i)tis, &c). In 
longer words, generally either derivatives or compounds, 
there seems to have been a middle tone ; in compounds on 
that part which lost its original accent, i.e. the first, e.g. 

uersi-pellis, circum-sisto, because the significance of the first 

member did not allow it to sink to a grave accent: but 

in derivatives it is certainly the most important part which 

suffers, as ira-cundus, longi-tudo. Some excessively long 

compounds might even have two middle tones, as quina- 

uicendria, uerbi-uelitdtio. 

The main result given by these facts is this : the accent Accent dc- 

was dependent on the quantity of the penultima : it was even f/™^™^. 

fixed to its place by the length or shortness of the penultima. tl .i °f the 

j penultima. 

Tims the accentuation of the Latin was far more stiff than 

that of the Greek. It is true that in Greek (at least in 

accordance with the rule observed in the age of literary 

activity) the accent could not stand farther back than the 

antepenultima. But within that limit it was free to range. 



202 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lbct. 

As Corssen admirably puts it: "the quantity limits the 
accent as to where it shall not stand ; not as to where it 
shall stand." It could and often did stand on the last syl- 
lable. In Latin it could not : and without doubt the mono- 
tonous weakening of this last syllable is closely connected 
with this comparative stiffness of the Latin accentuation. 
Reaction of But though the quantity thus reigned over the accent 

accent upon . . 

quantity, in Latin, yet it was not unaffected by it in its turn. The 
accent could shorten syllables and even cause their en- 
tire loss. It could shorten grave (i.e. unaccented) vowels, 
whether final or not : e.g. piito, dgnitus, molestus, ofella. It 
could abolish the final syllable, as in dic{e), dger(os), fdcul(is), 
and many others, which will presently appear in their 
order 1 . Thus though " the quantity could bind and 'break' 
the accent" (i.e. in the circumflex) "the accent limited and 
shortened the quantity. It was a conflict of inherent powers 
within the word' 2 ." But while the influence of the accent was 
but sporadic — acting in a few words like those above men- 
tioned — the influence of the quantity was regular. There- 
fore in the prime of Latin literature the quantity ruled the 
accent in the main. But the inevitable tendency of the 
accent to win the day at last, was only checked, in no 
way beaten back, by the Augustan rules. How supreme it 
had become by the beginning of the fifth century after Christ, 
is to be seen by a glance at the inscriptions of that time. 
We find, for example, these lines at the beginning of a pa- 
thetic epitaph of that date : it marked the grave of a little 
girl, called Felicity. 

Quod dulcis nati, quod cara pignora praestant, 
Continet liic tumulus, membra qui parva retentat. 
Dolorem sine fine dedit Felicitas isto, 
Clauditur infelix falso cognomine dicta 3 , &c. 

The first three lines all contain "false quantities:" the 

last happens to be correct by the Virgilian standard ; and at 

1 See Corssen's lists, n. 252. a 16. n. 253. 3 lb. n. 396. 



X.] LOSS. 203 

first sight we set down the whole epitaph as full of barba- 
rous errors. But this is wrong : the epitaph is right enough 
in the main if judged by the principle on which it was 
written. The old Hexameter-form is retained : but the beat 
of the first syllable in each foot, which is given by a long 
syllable in the old hexameter, can be given here by accent as 
well as by quantity. Six such beats are required, and 
nothing more : the syllables in thesi are unimportant ; if 
short, when by the old rule they ought to be long (as caret), 
they can be left short ; if long where they should have been 
short (as felicitas), they can if unaccented be shortened. 
That this is the general rule, in spite of exceptions (like 
membrd, above) will,. I think, be clear to any one who looks 
at many of these epitaphs of the later period. 

But in classical times, as we have seen, accent was in 
complete dependence on the quantity of the penultima : 
sometimes affecting other syllables, but not touching this 
one. How then are we to account for occasional weakenings 
like crep-{d)ui, &c. ? Here accent and quantity ought to 
have agreed to preserve the a ; and yet the strongest of all 
the vowels is absolutely lost. 

To explain this and many other such difficulties Corssen Cases 

assumes an older law of accentuation, differing from that in JjJj^JJ] 

common use, in two main points. common 

law, and 

1. The acute was not bound by the length of the penultima. can only 
This will account for cases where a penultimate vowel, long e( i ^ a li 
by nature or position, on which by the later rule the accent °J t f~ 

J r j ferent one. 

must have fallen, has been either absolutely lost, as crep{a)ui, 
vict[d)rix, si'ibi/o)rsvni, dddrot (for de'derunt), dix(is)ti, &c, 
or shortened, as fidei (from fideis), illtus, hominis, ph'i.tea, 
doceo, de'dimus, in all of which the penultima was once un- 
doubtedly long. The same applies to compounds, like 
cofjn7t>is. pnfro, &c. ; and to the manifold cases where the qua- 
lity of the vowel is weakened though the original quantity is 



204 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

retained, as in dnhelo, inqulro, dccuso; or in cdndemno, inermis, 
where the vowel is long by position. All these cases can be 
explained by supposing the accent to have fallen originally 
on the antepenultima, despite the length of the penultima — 
hardly in any other way. 

2. The accent might fall even on the fourth syllable from 
the end. This possibility will account for cases where the 
antepenultima has fallen out, though by the usual law it 
ought to have been the accent : e. g. in iur(i)gium, gdu(i)deo, 
puer(i)tia, pdp(u)licus, sur{ri)puit, de(hi)beo, ret(e)tulit, and 
countless others 1 . Another effect was the loss of the final 
vowel or syllable, as dnimal(e), frugifer(os), dpifex (i. e. dpi- 
fic(^l)s. Sometimes we see side by side the results of this 
method, and those of the later rule, long after that one had 
become general : e. g. dnimae besides animdi from animals, 
dederimus by dederlmus : so also in tris}dlables dederunt by 
dederunt. Such double forms shew the length of the contest : 
in which the later method was doubtless assisted by the 
new acquaintance with Greek laws of accentuation : but 
which certainly dated from an earlier time, as is shewn by 
the numerous syncopated forms in Plautus, and seems even 
to have been as old as the xn. Tables. 
Accentna- I have already mentioned that Corssen holds a similar 

older law of accentuation to have existed in Greece as well 
as in Italy. Such an agreement would materially increase 
the probability in either case ; for we should regard this older 
freer state as that of the Graeco-Italian time, and should con- 
clude that each nation developed out of this after the separa- 
tion its own system of accentuation as of pronunciation 2 . And 

1 See Corssen, n. 334. 

2 The evidence for an older system in Greece consists (1) of the redupli- 
cated presents (see p. 191), like /xL/x(e)p(a, where the accent ought hy the later 
rule to have fallen on the last vowel ; which would therefore not have been 
lost: (2) of nouns ending in us, as duaepus, dareus, &c. where the w must 
have been long, while it is not probable that the vowel of the penultima was 



Hon in 
other Ian 
guayes. 



X.] LOSS. 205 

we should be confirmed in this belief by discovering that in 
Sanskrit the accent is absolutely free — is subject to no gene- 
ral law, but shews many traces of a battle between the 
radical syllable and those prefixed or suffixed, which modi- 
fied it. The Sanskrit system has been left in a sufficiently 
simple form to enable us to say with certainty that the prin- 
ciple of it was this : that the accent should fall to that sylla- 
ble which was felt to be most important. This is the mark 
of the freshest power of conception in a people : and is the 
principle which we may therefore with some certainty attri- 
bute to the Tndo-Europeans. Of the other derived nations, 
the Greek stands nearest to the Sanskrit, by still keeping the 
power of emphasising change of idea expressed by suffixes ; 
but it was bound by the rule that the accent could not 
stand farther back than the antepenultima. In Latin we see 
an additional loss of energy, in the weakness of its termina- 
tions, as well as the restraints which it shares with the 
Greek. The German family, in which the accent was un- 
affected by quantity, but always thrown back as far as pos- 
sible in the word, shews the least living force of all. 

always mute; at least it is often scanned as a full short: (3) of the words 
ending in at and 01 which are accented on the antepenultima; these cannot 
really have been long in quantity and at the same time short for accent: 
(4) of some feminines like cijTrvo(f)ia, a\ride(cr)ia, &c. ; in them the final a 
was doubtless long originally, and it is inconceivable that the accent should 
have been thrown back if the long final had always power over it ; neitiier is 
it probable that the a was first shortened and then the accent thrown back, 
for there seems no other reason for the shortening of the a except the 
distance of the accent; at all events in words like iepeia (sacrifice), SovXela 
where the accent seems to have been always on the penultimate, the final a 
was never shortened. The possibility of the accent being farther back than 
the antepenultima, is shewn by syncopated words like (2efi(a)\r]Tai, rj\(v)0o/j.eu, 
4yly(e)veTo, &c. Here it would certainly seem that the accent on the first 
syllable must have been the cause of throwing out the vowels from the 
radical syllable, which ought moreover to have been accented. Tin Be indi- 
cations clearly do not amount to proof: but they at least give us some 
reason for believing it probable that at an earlier period the Greek accentua- 
tion was more free than afterwards. 



206 VOW r EL CHANGE. [Lect. 

Such, briefly stated, are Corssen's views about accent, so 

far as I understand them. His theory is certainly arbitrary ; 

and many of the instances on which he relies to prove it, 

may be susceptible of a different -explanation. But as it 

seems to me both possible and plausible, and as I know of 

no other equally good, I have thought it right to give it 

here. 

Middle It is not probable that the vowels thus lost fell out 

Latin be- abruptly, with no intermediate step. Before a short vowel 

vowel f 11 fi na % vanished it commonly passed through a stage in 

sounded which it was scarcely heard though still written, retained 

and entire- . . . -it-i-ii 

ly lost. without possessing any definite quantity, and liable therefore 
to be pronounced more or less distinctly according to chance 
of position. Such vowels accordingly had not the full 
length of a short vowel, for scanning, and therefore could 
be ignored at the pleasure of the writer, whether they 
occur in enclitics, as ipse, est, quidem, &c, or in the grave 
syllable of accented words, as voluptas, mdnu, bene, &c. 
Further, such a vowel could be disregarded even before 
two consonants, as senectuti 1 , ferent&riam,, &c. 2 ; also when a 
word ended with a consonant which was weakly sounded, 
such as m, n, s, t, d, and the next word began with a con- 
sonant, the vowel before the final consonant if weak itself 
was not lengthened by "position." These facts are conclu- 
sively proved by Corssen in the Aussprache, &c. Vol. II. 
pp. 70 — 126, by numerous examples 3 from the Latin dra- 

1 Plaut. Trin. 398. 2 Id. 456. 

3 For a long list of similar examples, see the excellent edition of the 
Trinummus by Brix, Intr. p. 16. 

The short vowel before doubled consonants in Plautus, e.g. simUlimae, 
Pliilippnm, is not parallel. These are to be explained by the well-known fact 
that the double consonant was not written before the days of Attius and 
therefore the sound wavered between a long and a short, but was probably 
always distinctly heard. So also in words like uxor, senex, Alexander, the 
reason of the apparently irregular shortening is that x did not sound much 
more than s. 



X.] LOSS. 207 

matists, wlio give us the best evidence by the common pro- 
nunciation of the day : to these vanishing vowels he gives 
the name " irrational." This then is the cause of the appa- 
rent irregularities in the lines of Plautus and Terence ; 
which are regular enough if we do not apply the standard of 
Greek metre to them. In these writers such vowels (follow- 
ing the analogy of the spoken language) are dumb although 
written. But this license w r as impossible in the regular 
metrical system of the Augustan poets. They could not 
brook these syllables either alive or dead. For them 
every vowel must be a full long, or a full short, or cease to 
exist altogether : they could not make up one short syllable 
out of two or three half-heard ones. Consequently they 
either struck out the lingering vowel-sound altogether, as in 
dextra, or raised it to a full short, as dextera ; they could not 
leave it ambiguous as dextera, where the vowel was heard 
indeed, but did not take up the time of a full short. It was 
no doubt especially the introduction into Rome of the dac- 
tylic metre, which favoured short syllables, that stopped in 
written Latin the ever-increasing vowel-corruption, and fixed 
the vocalism at that point which it had reached at Cicero's 
time. But the spoken Latin was being further corrupted 
none the less: its downward path must be traced through 
the vernaculars and into the Romance dialects. 

This explanation of the extensive corruption and loss of 
vowels in the Latin — that it was caused by the vowel gradually 
dying out of unaccented syllables — seems to me by far the 
most probable. It is given as I have already said by Corssen ; 
it is also now maintained by Ritschl 1 , though a different view 
was taken by him in the Prolegomena to the Trinummus ; 
by Dr Wagner in the admirable Introduction to his edition 
of the Aulularia, the first attempt with which I am ac- 

1 See Rheinisches Museum, xiv. 400. 



208 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

quainted to make known in England the process and results 
of etymological research in Germany ; and by Prof. Munro, 
in a review of Dr Wagner's book 1 . The opposite view is held 
by Prof. Key, and was formerly held by Ritschl, that the 
words were compressed in the utterance, e. g. that manus 
was sounded as mnus (not as manus, with the last syllable 
"dumb") ; similarly that we should pronounce snex, sror for 
senex, soror, &c. This theory is often supported by instances 
like pere, mere, &c. in French, where the t is supposed to 
have fallen out through this compression of the total sound 2 . 
But the reference to French to prove the pronunciation of 
Latin, seems to me just as deceptive as to argue from 
modem to ancient Greek : on which subject I have spoken 
above. While much may be said for this, as for all Prof. 
Key's theories, yet this one seems to me much less adapted 
than Corssen's to the genius of the Latin language, which as 
we have seen already in part, and shall now see more fully, 
produces above all things corruption of the last syllable. 
Loss in and For I come now to the loss of the final syllable, both 
syllable a- when the vowel itself ends the word, and when it is followed 
{l^nei-cr™ 1 by an im perfectly sounded consonant, which was lost either 
bemg ac- "before, or with the vowel : as the principle is the same in 

cented. 

both cases, they may be "considered both together. I thought it 
better to defer these until I had stated a probable reason for 
them, because the examples are mostly familiar to you, and 
I should have run the risk of merely telling you a number 
of isolated facts which you knew before ; whereas you will 
be able now, I hope, to refer them all to one principle. Often 
where the vowel is not absolutely lost, it has suffered loss of 
quantity from the same general cause ; I must therefore for 
the sake of completeness briefly consider this loss also, 

1 Camb. Univ. Gazette, April 28, 1869. 

2 It is, I think, more truly explained by Wagner (Aul. introd. p. xxxiv. 
note) as having been assimilated to the r. 



X.] LOSS. 2^9 

though I have not now time to enter fully into the history 
of Latin prosody, a good account of which (so far as Plautus 
at least is concerned) will be found in Wagner's Aulularia, 
and Brix's Trinummus. 

The loss in quantity as the slighter loss will naturally Loss in 
come first : and here let as first look at those cases where quan lty ' 
the vowel of the last syllable has been shortened, although 
the final consonant was not lost, but probably indistinctly 
pronounced — a point which will come under our notice 
when we treat of consonantal change. Thus, a, e, i were 
long in the verbal bases ama, morie, audi, and as they are 
still found long in the second person amas, &c, were no 
doubt once always long in the third also, amdt, &c. Yet 
instances are hardly to be found of the vowel occurring long 
even in Plautus 1 : on the contrary, the syllable is commonly 
short : though oddly enough there are several instances of a 
in the imperfect even in classical Latin ; where the unusual 
length is generally explained by the editors as simply the 
result of arsis : I have already said that " metrical license" is 
most foreign to the spirit of the Augustan poetry : and we 
should never have found e.g. amittebdt 2 if the old long-sound 
of the a had not been sometimes heard in the speech of the 
day. Examples of the vowel being still long in the present 
in the Augustan age are ardt (Hor. Od. III. 12. 26), ridet 
(id- II. 4. 14), videt (Aen. I. 308) 3 . For the subjunctive we 

1 Corssen quotes Merc. 648, 'Quid istuc captas consilium? Quia enim 
me adflictat amor.' 2 Aen. v. 853. 

3 Prof. Munro, in a note to Lucr. n. 27, denies that there is any analogy 
between fulget there (and similar long forms in Virgil) and the lengthening 
of such syllables in Ennius. But at all events Virgil would not have 
lengthened a syllable which was not long in Ennius ; there is at least 
so much analogy: and if my principle be correct, the vowel cannot have 
been wholly short in the common speech even of Virgil's day; or he would 
not have used it as long. That such long syllables are only found in arsis 
in Virgil, and not in thesis as in Ennius, is natural enough, for no doubt 
the tendency to shorten the final syllable, when not emphasised, had in- 
creased greatly between the days of Ennius and Virgil. 

P. L. 14 



210 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

have fudt, augeat, &c in Plautus and Terence ; the a being 
afterwards shortened by the general tendency to weaken the 
final syllable. Similarly Horace has periret 1 . Curiously 
even the i in the third conjugation is found long in figlt 2 , and 
facU 3 and others. Wagner compares the Greek e. g. Xeyet 41 ; 
and therefore, I suppose, regards the lengthening as compen- 
satory : but it may be on a mistaken analogy. The perfect 
has its third person long more frequently, as astitlt 5 , &c, 
and compare the end of one line of the epitaph of Scipio, 
" hie fuit apud uos." In the second person of the subj unctive 
perfect, the i seems hardly more short than long in the Au- 
gustan age. Examples of the long a in the present are 
loqudr, opprimdr 6 , &c. Passing from verbs to nouns we see 
in Plautus the final still long of soror, stultior 7 , &c. ; though 
the o is elsewhere short in soror and similar words, as might 
be inferred from the process of weakening which gradually 
reduced the full long vowel to something less than a short. 
Hannibal was still long with Ennius, as Corssen suggests 8 , 
because the name was derived from the Phoenician Baal, 
and was naturally long, and afterwards shortened by the 
prevailing Latin tendency. Lastly -bus (originally -bhyas) 
in the dative plural is long in Plautus 9 : and rarely in Virgil, 
e. g. in Aen. IV. 64. 
Loss of When the final consonant was not merely weakly sounded 

when the but absolutely lost, the tendency to shorten the preceding 
wnanTwas vowe ^ was stl ^ stronger. The vowel remained unguarded to 
lost ' suffer the wear and tear of use, and was affected in the same 

way as originally final letters. Here, as in the cases men- 
tioned above, vowels which were generally long in the days 



1 Od. in. 5. 17. 3 Od. in. 24. 5. 

3 Eel. vii. 23. 4 Introd. p. xix. 

6 Plaut. Mil. 213. 6 Plaut. Amph. 559, and 1056. 

7 Poen. i. 2. 151. Bacch. 123. » i. 366. 
9 e.g. Aid. 376. 



X.] LOSS. 211 

of Plautus and his cotemporaries were shortened in the com- 
mon speech in the last century before Christ — so much so 
that they were generally scanned as such by Virgil and 
Horace, though the older quantity occasionally still appears in 
their times, breaking the regularity of the Greek metres they 
employed. Some words retained their concluding vowel long 
to a late period. When the d of the ablative was lost, final a 
none the less retained its length till the times of the later 
empire. One exception is ita, which is long in Naevius' well- 
known line, 

Itaque postquamst Orci traditus thensauro. 
But final e commonly sank to e, as patre; though we have 
on Scipio's tomb, 

Gnaiuod patre prognatus, fortis uir sapiensque. 

Traces are found of a middle form ei, as in Ennius' line ; 
Turn caua sub montei late specus intus patebat. 
Long e was retained in me and te from med and ted: 
whilst the ablative of the third pronoun kept the d but 
shortened the vowel, and appeared as sed literally "by 
itself:" its original length is shewn in compounds like sed- 
Itio. Adverbs in -e, originally ablatives in -ed, generally 
remained long, except short words in common use, as bene, 
male, and a few trisyllables where the accent fell on the 
penultima, as inferne 1 , superne. Similarly quevt&s originally 
quid, then qui, que (by the tendency mentioned above to 
change a final vowel into e) and que 2 : and from this longer 
vowel still being possible to the consciousness of language, 
Virgil could write his "Liminaque laurusque Dei 3 ." Then 

1 Lucr. vi. 597. 

2 The correspondence in meaning with the vulgar English "which" is 
comical. When Virgil said "Arma uirumque cano," "arms I sing, which 
I sing the man," he was unconsciously using the exact idiom of Mrs Gamp 
and P'leaceman X. The originative power of language is limited after all. 

3 A en. in. 91. 

14—2 



212 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. 

modo, whilst still used as the ablative of modus, is shortened 
by Plautus 1 : so also cito and ergo, adverbs, though the 
latter is not commonly shortened till the Silver age, when 
numerous examples of final o shortened are found 2 , which 
would have been inadmissible in classical Latin, but which 
were daily growing more numerous in common speech in 
the days of the classical poets. In fact the Augustan authors 
used the short final o only in words which had been so com- 
pletely worn down by common use that no feeling of their 
old length remained, such as cito, modo, homo and ego, short- 
ened from homon and eg on. A huge list of words ending in 
d, which are found in Juvenal and Martial — who no doubt 
reflect the common pronunciation of the day — is given by 
Corssen, from whom indeed nearly all the examples I have 
quoted above are taken 3 . 
Loss of Next, the loss in Latin terminations is to be seen in 

quantity m 

originally the shortening of originally final vowels. Thus the a of the 
vowels. feminine nominative was early shortened, leaving but few 
traces of itself in Ennius and Plautus 4 ; and sometimes cer- 
tainly in inscriptions, as in the grand line on the tomb of 
the young L. Cornelius Scipio 5 , 

Quoiei uita defeeit, non honos, honore. 

In locatives we find % in domi 6 , and others in Plautus : 
mihi, &c. could have the final vowel short or long down to 
the Augustan age ; compare nisi and quasi. Imperative dis- 
syllables early shortened the last vowel, as was but natural 
to the brevity of command; roga, iube, mane, &c. are fre- 
quent in Plautus : also other (not imperative) forms, as dam, 

1 Aul. 589. See Wagner's Introduction, p. xxii. 

2 e.g. in Juvenal, pond (vn. 93),uigilandd (in. 232); and numerous others 
both in this author and in Martial. 

3 Corssen i. 346. 

4 As. 762 epistuld: Bacch.255, "Volcanus, Sol, Luna, Dies, Di quattuor:" 
unless we follow Fleckeisen and transpose Sol and Luna, for which there 
seems no occasion. 5 Mommsen, Corpus, n. 34. 6 Mil. 194. 



X.] LOSS. 213 

dedi, because of their shortness and frequency : also in the 
first person is short in eo and void — dissyllables again, and 
found in Plautus, but in the Silver age the tendency had 
affected longer verbs as well. 

We now come lastly to the absolute loss of the vowel, Loss of 
either when it stands actually last, or when it is followed the final 
only by a weakly-sounded consonant, that is practically*^ 
by none at all — the result, like the loss of quantity already 
considered, of the tendency in Latin to throw back the 
accent as far as possible from the end of the word, sub- 
ject to the rule of the length of the penultima. First 
under this head comes the loss of original 0, or later u, in 
the nominatives, such as ager(os), puer(os), &c, a numer- 
ous class; as famul for famvl(ps) used by Lucretius 1 after 

Ennius, 

Ossa dedit terrae proin ac famul infimus esset. 

It is not easy to determine in these cases whether the 
vowel or the 5 went first : we should rather have expected 
the s : but there are no traces of the vowel surviving : on 
the contrary, s is found alone in words like Camparis 2 , but 
this seems almost unique. But the vowel i has certainly 
fallen out and left the s in nouns like Arpina(ti)s, where the 
t after the loss of the vowel would seem to have assimilated 
itself to the s ; so in men(fi)s, fron(di)s, and very many others : 
in orb(i)s, &c. where the preceding consonant is not a dental, 
it keeps its place unchanged. Where a liquid precedes, the 
liquid maintains its ground, and the s is lost, e. g. vigiliis), 
uomer(is), pedester(is), and very many others; where how- 
ever the accent falling on the antepenultima sometimes 
drove out the e of the next syllable, and produced the other 
form, as pedestris. The same principle seems to have pro- 
duced out of uelis (i. e. si uelis) the conjunctive uel s . 

1 in. 1035. 2 Plaut. Trin. 545, quoted by Corssen, 11. 55. 

3 Corssen, 11. 60. 



214 VOWEL-CHANGE. [Lect. X. 

/ followed by no consonant fell away regularly in neuter 
nominatives, such as animal[i)> lacunar (i), cochlear (i), pi- 
per(i), lacifi): though Corssen mentions forms in -e, as 
lacunare, existing side by side with these, as was quite natu- 
ral ; he quotes sale (i. e. sal) from Ennius. Similarly in 
many adverbs the i has been lost, as tot{i), ut(i), post(i), &c. 
For tot and quot Corssen compares the Sanskrit tati and 
kati, and calls ti a " demonstrative particle :" but tati seems 
to be rather an old locative form produced by adding i to the 
pronominal base tat. The i was lost in very old times from 
the verbal terminations, as regis(i), regitii), regont{i) ; also 
from regebdm(i). 

i£was lost in imperatives of the third or old conjugation, 
just as a and e were shortened in the first and second : e. g. 
in dic(e),fac(e) : but the full forms are common in Plautus : 
this loss therefore was a late one. Many little words in 
common use have lost their final e, as neu(e), originally ne 
uelis, hic(e) } &c. ; nee (i.e. nequi or neque), qui-n(e), si-n(e), 
&c. The fuller forms, hice, hae-ce, the nom. plur. hisce, &c, 
are sometimes still to be seen in Plautus. This e, which 
was in these cases weakened from i, must have been so 
slight a sound, and so little inconvenient at the end of a 
word, that it is lost less frequently than we might have 
expected. 



LECTURE XL 



CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 



In the last five Lectures I have mentioned, I think, the most Superiority 
important variations of the Greek and of the Latin vowel- ^j/^J^ 
system from that of their common Graeco-Italian ancestors, I i atm tJl1 f s 

far mam- 

and from the simple vocalism of the earliest historic period fested. 
of our race. We have seen in these variations the strength 
of the Greek and the weakness of the Italian. We have 
seen how the Greek could adhere in the main to the simple 
distinction of scales in the original vowel-system, and yet 
could avail itself with remarkable success of any expansion 
of that system. The Greek vocalism shews the greatest 
observance of rule, combined with the greatest individuality : 
and thus coincides with the highest development of Greek 
character to a degree which seems at first surprising, which 
yet ought not to surprise us, if we believe, as we surely may, 
that the character of a nation must be impressed on its 
language, so far as that language is the result of pure in- 
ternal development, and has not been compounded of many 
foreign elements. The Italian on the contrary both con- 
founded that distinction of the three main vowels which is 
essential for the clear expression of distinct radical ideas, and 
also subjected itself to a rule which kept ever increasing in 



216 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

stringency, the tendency to uniform monotonous weakening. 
So far then we have seen the Greek at its best, the Latin at 
Greater its worst. Now we shall see the better side of the Latin 
the Latin compared with the Greek, shewn in its greater tenacity of 
consonants, consonantal sound. No doubt the Latin not unfrequently 
substituted a weaker for a stronger consonant, as well as the 
Greek or indeed any other language : every language has its 
own peculiar weakenings of this kind ; they are the most 
obvious marks of distinction between one language and 
another. But the greater strength of the Latin consonants 
is shewn in their comparative freedom from assimilation, 
which in many Greek verbs obscures the radical form. Thus 
in (fypaacrco we have the same root and the same suffix (yo) 
as in the Latin farc-io: but the k of the root is lost in Greek 
from the assimilating effect of the y, which in Latin was 
simply resolved into the cognate vowel, and exercised no 
power over the stronger consonant: indeed the k is hardly 
recoverable in Greek because it has regularly sunk to 7, as 
in €-(f>pa<y-ov ; just as it sank to bairg in Gothic, that language 
which of all the Indo-European family comes nearest to the 
Greek in the richness of its vowel-system : the original k is 
to be discovered in the less spiritual Latin and Lithuanian. 
Generally speaking, however, the original form is recoverable 
in Greek from some of the tenses which are formed directly 
from the root : the Greeks felt too keenly the necessity of 
clearness to surfer the consonants to be absolutely ob- 
literated; they are the necessary framework of language, 
the body which is needed for the soul ; yet the soul may 
be vigorous though many bodily members are weak or even 
lost. It is curious too how the innate Greek love of symme- 
try is recognisable even in the weakenings of its consonants : 
they are nearly always regular, not often isolated : there is a 
system to be found in almost all of them: while the Latin 
looks uneven in the midst of its regularity; its loss especially 



XL] CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 217 

of consonants in groups is arbitrary and not reducible to 
rule; anpl even its less corrupted verb-forms have a more 
"irregular" appearance than those of the Greek. Nothing 
can look more regular than e&fiai, ctt%cd, o-^i^oy, /jlv^co, &c, 
but this regularity leaves us quite uncertain whether the 
root ends in a guttural or a dental ; while there is no such 
uncertainty about the very unsymmetrical forms which cor- 
respond to them in Latin, sedeo, stinguo, scindo, mugio. But 
these points will be clearer when we see the difference in the 
changes of the two languages. 

The principle of change is here the same as in the General 
vowels. Desire for ease of articulation leads naturally to the determine 

change of a stronger to a weaker sound. It will therefore be th ; e rel< * t,ve 
° strength oj 

necessary for us first of all to get some general idea of the the conso- 
relative strength of the consonants. It can be but general, 
because every language has its own scale, which is discover- 
able only by investigating the facts of each particular 
language : but we can lay down a few broad rules which 
seem to be common to all languages, as they depend on 
physiological facts which do not vary for different peoples ; 
and then see how far the history of the Greek and Latin 
languages confirms these rules : and how far the facts which 
will come before us point to peculiar rules of these two 
languages. 

First of all then we may assert with confidence that a Momentary 
momentary sound is stronger than a protracted one, and stronger 
therefore we may expect to find, as we actually do, that a ^ a7 !^ ro " 
momentary sound passes into a protracted one, but not vice 
versa, except from some assimilating influence which is 
sufficient to explain the apparent irregularity. It is I think 
quite clear that the complete check given for a moment to 
the breath must require a stronger effort on the part of the 
organs of speech, than is needed when there is no perfect 
stoppage, but the stream of air is suffered to flow on in a 



218 



CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 



[Lect. 



Hard 



stronger 
titan soft, 
each in 
their oion 



Unaspira- 
ted sounds 
stronger 
than the 
correspond- 
ing aspi- 
rates. 



slightly altered current until it is exhausted ; just as the 
mill-dam endures a more violent pressure than the break- 
water over which the stream rushes. 

Next, among the momentary sounds, the hard will be 
stronger than the soft, each in its own class. The difference 
of effort will be seen by producing both sounds, but is not 
easily demonstrable without entering more into physiological 
questions than I purpose to do 1 : the rule however will be 
sufficiently borne out by facts of the Greek and Latin : in 
which there is no backward process, such as that of the 
Teutonic Lautverschiebung (better known to us as the 
changes of Grimm's Law): the difficulty of which seems to 
me to be met by the explanation that the change began in 
each case by weakening, that when e.g. the aspirate (or the 
breath which represented it) was used by weakening to 
express an originally hard, and a soft was used to denote the 
aspirate which had taken to other work, then for the sake of 
clearness it became absolutely necessary that the remaining 
hard should take the place of the original soft. 

Next, the aspirate is weaker than the corresponding un- 
aspirated letter. This follows from the nature of the aspi- 
rates, of which I have already said something 2 , and shall 
have more to say hereafter : the breath heard in each case 
follows upon less permanent, that is less strong, contact. 
On this theory it no longer seems unnatural that the more 
voluminous kh should be weaker than k or gh than g. But 
when the sound denoted here by h became at last, as I 
believe it did, not a subsidiary breath but an independent 
sound, the spiritus asper ; then kh, gh, &c. must be treated 
as compounds, subject to the ordinary influences which 
affect compounds, such as loss of one of the members, or 



1 It is hardly necessary to refer any one who wishes to understand this 
part of the subject to the third lecture of Max Miiller's second series. 

2 See Lect. I. p. 10, see also p. 55. 



XI.] CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 219 

assimilation of one member by the other. This is the reason 
why, though gh be weaker than g, we can yet find in Latin, 
and perhaps in Greek, g in the place of original gh : e.g. 
ang-ustus from Indo-European AGH : gh has become a 
double sound, and the h has been dropped from the end of 
the compound. That the aspirates were in their origin later 
than the unaspirated letters, can be best seen in Sanskrit — 
a language which especially deserves our thanks for perform- 
ing within historical times so many of the oldest processes of 
language. There we see the hard aspirates being produced 
from the hard letters, e.g. th from t in the superlative pra-tha- 
ma, where the analogy of other languages leaves no doubt 
that the suffix was originally -tama, and the th consequently 
the product of Hindu laziness 1 . 

The hard then is naturally stronger than the soft, and Of the 
the unaspirated than the aspirated letter. What now is classes the 
the relation of one hard to another hard? What law { f J uU ^ als 

are the 

strength governs the exchange which we sometimes find strongest. 
between one class and another, guttural and dental, dental 
and labial, &c? We have already, in dealing with vowel- 
assimilation, considered the vowels as sounds produced at 
a series of points in the passage of the air from the lungs 
to the lips : and I have explained why such order could not 
be taken (as we might have expected it should be) for the 
scale of vowel-strength, because each vowel is not so much 
simple breath, but breath modified by the different organs 
which it passes; and it is the sum of the whole exertion, of 
both expelling and partially checking the breath, which is the 
measure of the strength of each particular vowel. But in the 
case of consonants, where there is a complete check, the rule 
that their strength varies as their distance from the lungs 
seems to be absolute; that is, that the gutturals are stronger 

1 Sec Curtius, Or. FA. p. 389. 



220 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

than the palatals (in those languages which possess palatals), 
the palatals than the Unguals, and these than the dentals 
and the labials: and this is the order of the consonants 
given by the acute Indian grammarians, doubtless inten- 
tionally. The current of air is strongest at the outset, and 
gradually grows weaker. No doubt an additional impulse 
may be given to it at any point of its passage; but if no 
such impulse be given, it naturally is feebler at the lips than 
in the throat. Therefore the minimum effort required to 
stop it at the lips is less than in the throat : in other words, 
a labial is naturally a weaker sound than a guttural. The 
merest closing and opening the lips is sufficient to produce 
the sound p with hardly more additional effort than is re- 
quired for the mere passing out of the air within the mouth ; 
but it is impossible to sound k without conscious effort. 
Therefore we must expect k to pass into p, but never with- 
out strong reason allow that p can pass into k. Here again 
the Sanskrit stands us in good stead by its greater number 
of consonants. The theory that the guttural k is naturally 
the strongest of all sounds is borne out by the fact that k actu- 
ally passes into the palatal ch but not ch into k: when we have 
the double form in a group of Sanskrit words, we find regu- 
larly k in corresponding words of other languages; so that 
ch is clearly a Sanskrit weakening. Again, the greater 
strength of the gutturals is shewn by the difficulty which 
children find in pronouncing them; also by their hardly 
appearing in terminations, or when they do, yet never as 
the second element of a consonantal group, not tk, dg but 
kt, gd l . This last argument indeed cannot be pressed 
to its full result, for we find in terminations pt and bd, as 
well as kt and gd, so that by this reasoning p and b ought 
to be stronger sounds than t and d. But the reason here 

1 Gr. Et. 390. 



XL] CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 22 1 

seems to be that labials, which require perfect closing of the 
lips, are ill suited for the end of a word, where we instinc- 
tively prefer those sounds in which the breath is not articu- 
lated by the lips, as among the vowels e rather than either 
o or u. Probably indeed dentals and labials do not differ 
much in strength, but still, in the few cases of exchange, 
it is the dental that seems to pass into the labial. 

We have thus got a tolerably definite idea of the sort General 
of changes we must expect to find among momentary sounds. ^^ 
For the protracted sounds it is less easy to lay down rules. P°« si ^ 

for pro- 

They are in their nature much less definite than the mo- traded 

mentary; and much depends on the length of time during 

which they are sounded. The nasals, as we have seen, are Among the 

to some extent dependent on other stronger consonants ; the ^ s " j e m 

guttural nasal indeed not often standing single. Curtius Wronger 

thinks that where we find m and n in corresponding words 

the m is the stronger. But most of his examples (e.g. 86/jlov 

but domum, Sanskrit damam, and the German Faden for 

old Fadem) are of final m, which, like other labials, is 

inconvenient at the end of a word. If we assume the of the spi- 

strength of the spirants in the order of their pronunciation, £j^J.j^i* 

we should get y, s, v, which is probably correct, but they do est >' 

not seem to interchange much. Certainly neither of the 

last two ever passes into y; and Curtius thinks even the few 

cases where we find F on inscriptions instead of original y, 

e.g. Fort, are pure mistakes in writing; it being known that 

some letter had dropped, and more trace of v having been 

left than of y. The history of h differs for different Ian- h is thc 

T *L n (. weakest in 

guages. In Greek it is always the remnant of one of the GrUk. 
spirants, and weaker than any of them; in Latin it has 
replaced gh, and seems to have been pretty strongly sounded. 
Since r when sounded distinctly is a lingual and s a dental, Jn GrccJ . 
we should expect that r would pass into s. In Greek and and Latin 

T . . sis stronger 

Latin, however, the reverse is undoubtedly the case ; in fact, than r. 



222 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

r is a fluctuating sound which can be produced at different 
points of the air-tube; and, at least in Latin, it seems to 
have strong affinities to the dentals, as we shall hereafter 
see. In Greek the change from a to p is pretty well con- 
fined to the Laconian 1 . We have already seen that r is 
older than I; see page 81. Many suggestive remarks on 
this subject of consonantal strength are to be found in pages 
385 — 398 of the Griechische Etymologie. I shall say no 
more here, but shall proceed to the actual changes found in 
Greek and Latin, under the same heads as we took for 
vowel-change; but taking Loss immediately after Substitu- 
tion for greater convenience of arrangement ; since some 
classes of letters, especially the spirants in Greek and the 
aspirates in Latin, suffer from both. 



I. Substitution. 
1. Change of hard (unaspirated) letters to soft. 
Change of This chauge is the simplest process of substitution. It 

hards to 
softs — not 



is not very common in either language, and less so in Latin 
very com- than in Greek; in both languages it is sporadic only, never 

affecting the whole even of any class of words. 
Change of Thus k passes into 7 in dp^yco from the root APK, which 
an dg. is unaltered in ap/aos. May the change arise from the 
softening influence of the two vowels and /o? I have already 
mentioned the Greek cfrpay- by the side of Latin farc-io, 
but the aa of (ppaaaco shews that <E>PAK must have been 
the real Greek root, for we should have had cj)pa^co from 
(j)pay. Indeed, the Latin has commonly preserved for us 
the original letter, which the Greek has weakened. Thus 
in Greek we have irr^yvv^i, and even in Latin pango and 

1 Curtius, Gr. Et. p. 396. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 223 

pagus: but pac-iscor shews that the oldest form of this com- 
mon root, "to fix" — whence "to build" or " to covenant" 
— was PAK, and not PAG, as we should have rather sup- 
posed from the frequency of the g; and wcurcraXos (i.e. 
7raK-ya-\o-<;) tells the same tale. Compare fjilayco and 
misceo \ 

In Latin gloria is from KLU y the Indo-European KRU; 
the first step is the noun clouos (compare /cXe'Fo?), which with 
the suffix ya becomes the secondary noun clouosia; and 
this, by the loss of u and the change of s to r, is cloria; 
after which the I is probably responsible for the g, and the 
change therefore is rather one of assimilation 2 . But there 
is simple substitution in viginti by the side of Fi/cart (Attic 
ec/coo-o), and gubemo (/cvfiepvaoo); whilst the variation within 
the Latin itself is seen in gurgulio by the Plautine curculio 3 . 
The older h is pointed out by Corssen (1. c), as often found 
in the Old Umbrian, where the Latin had weakened it. 

But this change of sound in Latin is doubtless connected Peculiar 
with a curious and well -ascertained fact in the history of the ^Tard 
Latin alphabet. The old Latin alphabet had, like the Greek, gJJT - * 
K for the hard guttural, C or ^ (Greek T) for the soft. 
But the difference between the two sounds was nearly lost 
at some early period, and consequently K fell out of use : 
it was only retained occasionally before a, though it was 
regularly kept as the abbreviated form of some words as 
K(aeso), K(alendae), &c; whilst C, not G, is found in old 
inscriptions in forms like macister, cnata, &c; leciones stands 
on the restored Columna Rostrata: C. and Cn. were used till 
quite late for Gaius and Gnaeus. In fact, k and g alike were 
represented by c, that is by the ^r-sound. But at a later date, 
some time in the third century B.C., the distinction of sound 

1 A full list of all the gutturals thus changed in Greek is given in the 
Gr. Et. 467—469. 

2 See Krit. Beitr. 53. 3 Corssen, i 2 . 77. 



224 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

begins to reappear, as Corssen suggests very probably 1 , from 
the increasing intercourse of Rome with foreign peoples, 
especially the Greeks of southern Italy. But instead of 
replacing K for the hard guttural sound, the Romans slightly 
modified the existing symbol C, so as to denote G, and kept 
C for the hard sound 2 . That the rather frequent change 
from k to g in Latin is due in great measure to their con- 
fusion, seems to me probable, from the fact that for the 
other classes there is less corresponding weakening; to which 
indeed the Latin had no great leaning. The change of K 
or C into QV will be considered afterwards ; also its weaken- 
ing under some particular circumstances into a palatal sound 
like ch, which arises from assimilation. 
Change of The hard dental passes into the soft much more rarely 
T to sand even in Qreek. We find Saw 3 , which seems to be the 
same as rdir-rj^. It is at least probable that the curious 
word veTroSes 4 is the same as nepotes, the shortening of the 
o being due partly to the accent, partly to the confusion by 
the grammarians with 7r6Se? : whereas Curtius rightly, I 
think, derives both from the root NAP, whence come so many 
words denoting relationship: dvety-ios, "a cousin," the San- 
skrit naptar, " a grandson," the Norse nefi, " a brother," and 
our "nephew;" a rather remarkable list of different "spe- 
cialisations" in different languages. That the groups ttt 
and kt have sunk to /38 and 78 in e/38o/mos and 078009 from 
67TTa and oktco seem equally undeniable and difficult to 
explain 5 . 

In Latin it is probable (as Corssen asserts 6 ) that there 

1 i 2 . 10. 

2 The earliest place where G certainly occurs seems to be the tombstone 
of Scipio Barbatus, about 200 b.c. Corssen, lb. 

3 Arist. Vesp. 676. 

4 Od. iv. 404. Theok. xvn. 25. See Or. Et. 241, and 471. 

5 Curtius (Gr. Et. 471) thinks that in Updo/ios was irrational, and that 
the fi assimilated the r, and that in time the ir. 

6 Krit. Beitr. 83 et sea. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 225 

is no instance of t sinking to d at the beginning of a word, 
or between two vowels; that is, of regular substitution. The 
confusion between t and d at the end of a word (shewn in 
the different spellings of the best MSS., aput and apud, 
haut and haud, set and sed, &c.) belongs rather to the uni- 
versal weakness of Latin terminations. The rule that the 
prepositions ended in d, and the conjunctions in t, seems to 
rest neither on etymological grounds nor on the actual 
■ inscriptions 1 ; rather the final letter of these words, which 
were enclitic and fell constantly under one accent with the 
following word, was assimilated by the initial letter. Assimi- 
lation is the cause of quattuor turning into quadraginta: the 
numerals both in Latin and Greek constantly shew us 
odd variation of sound, so that identification must often 
depend, as it may safely here, on sameness of meaning. 

For the change from it to 8 Curtius gives about a dozen Change of 
• 1 o 1 • i 1 11 Ptopandb. 

more or less certain examples, of which perhaps the best are 

vjSpis, which seems to be derived from virep, and /eaXvftq, 
compared with kclXvittw 2 : the it may be the mark of a 
secondary root KALP from KAL ; compare Latin clup-eus. 

There are rather more examples in the Latin. Bibo is 
certainly a weakened reduplicated form of PA, " to drink :" 
the Greek has preserved the consonant but weakened the 
vowel to 1. Scabillum too may be compared with SKA II in 
a/cr/TT-rpov, &c, and glaber with y\a<f)vp6s 3 . This weakening 
however is especially remarkable in words borrowed at an 
early date from the Greek, as Burrus for Uvppos, carbasus 
for KCLpTracros. At a later period p is not changed in words 
similarly borrowed : and this weakening of p into b, in con- 
nection with that of k to g mentioned above, may perhaps 
shew, as Corssen suggests, that the Romans just before their 
more extended intercourse with foreign nations had not a good 

1 Corssen, i 2 . 191, &c. 3 Or. Et. 471 -474. 

3 Corssen, i 2 . 128, 

P.L. 15 



226 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

ear for the distinction between hard and soft checks : a dis- 
tinction which under Greek influence they afterwards re- 
covered. Undeniably a parallel revival took place in Umbria 
through Roman influence. 



2. Further substitution for momentary (unaspirated) 
sounds. 

Such substitution seems to be confined to one or two 
cases in Latin. In Greek there is no further change of these 
letters which does not seem to belong rather to assimilation 
Change of than to simple substitution. In Latin the only letter which 
Latin. is much affected is d. This sometimes passes into / and r. 
The first change takes place commonly at the beginning of 
a word : thus leuir = the Greek BaFrjp, and the originality of 
the d is shewn by the Sanskrit devar. That lingua was ori- 
ginally dingua is probable from the Gothic tuggS, our 
" tongue." And dacrima as the older form of lacrima (cor- 
responding to Bd/cpv, and Gothic tagr, a "tear") was used by 
Livius Andronicus according to Festus, and probably, as 
Bergk suggests, by Ennius in his famous lines : 

Nemo me dacrumis decoret neque funera fletu 
f axit. cur ? uolito uiuos per ora uirom. 

The argument from alliteration seems irresistible. There 
are some rare but undoubted examples of the same change 
between two vowels : as olere, ol(e)facere, &c. from OD, which 
is found in odor and in oBcoSa. Corssen explains the change 
by the fact that the tip of the tongue is in motion in sound- 
ing I, and also in sounding the double d ; whence the va- 
riation 1 . Perhaps however the real explanation may be 
that Latin d was not a true dental — i. e. the tongue may 
not have been pressed really against the teeth but only 

1 Ausspr. i 2 . 223. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 227 

against the upper part of the mouth behind the teeth, as is 
commonly the case in England : if so, the point at which d 
and I were sounded would be exceedingly near, and confu- 
sion possible. And the same reason would explain the other 
chaDge of d into r : which is not at all uncommon in old Change of 
Latin, e. g. in Cato's book on agriculture ; and arfuerunt, ar- 
fuisse, aruorsum, for adfuerunt, &c, occur in the Decree con- 
cerning the Bacchanalia 1 . But in the classical Latin these 
words again appear with the d, shewing that the change was 
only beginning to be felt at the commencement of the literary 
epoch, which checked it : only three words which are fami- 
liar to us shew the r : these are arbiter (bat ad-biter e), arcesso, 
and meridies (root madh, as in Sanskrit madhya and fjueacros, 
i.e. fMe6-yo-s : this dh would become d in Latin 2 ). It would seem 
that r if sounded at the natural place, the top of the palate, 
would be less likely than I to be confused with a dental. 
But that the Italians had one r-sound (they may have had 
more than one) which was sounded close behind the upper 
teeth, and so was almost a dental, is shewn by the constant 
passage of s into r, of which we shall speak shortly, and by 
the change of d in Umbrian into a sound still more resem- 
bling s, which expressed in Roman characters appears as rs*. 
I consider these two changes then as entirely due to a weak 
pronunciation of d, by which that letter was sounded so near 
to the point at which I and weak r are produced, that they 
were substituted for it : there is no need to suppose an assi- 
milation by other sounds. 

3. Substitution for Spirants. 

This, as has been often said, is the change which has /. Greek 
affected the Greek language more than any other. No other fa. the 

spirant 8. 
1 Mommsen, Corpus, p. 43. 2 See Quint. 1. G. 30. 

3 Aufrecht and Kirchhoff, Umbr. Sprachdenfonalcr, 1. 84 ; and Corssen, 
1 3 . 238—241. 

15—2 



228 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

letters have had so many substitutes or been so regularly 
allowed to drop: and there can be no doubt that the pecu- 
liar liquidity of the Greek — its constant accumulation of 
vowels without a consonant 1 , is mainly due to the loss of 
these rather insignificant sounds. I shall consider their sub- 
stitutes and their loss together, since the first pass naturally 
into the second, and cannot without inconvenience be taken 
separately, 
(i) Changes (1) No trace is left of the symbol y in the earliest 
Greek. known period of Greek history. Instead we find i, especially 
{i) Y=i. « n ^ e su fg x y ^ w hich forms so many both primary and 
secondary nouns in all the languages 2 . Thus, when added 
immediately to the root it produces numerous adjectives, 
Trdyios (irary-yo-), and nouns, such as v to? (av-yo-) ; sometimes 
with the i displaced, as fioZpa (i. e. fjuop-ya) : added to bases it 
produces secondary nouns, such as dvBp'i-w-s 3 , where however 
the double sound commonly passed into a monophthong, and 
evaefteia from evaefiea-ya ; the feminine perfect participles, as 
rerv(f)vla for T6TV(j)OT-ya ; and adjectives with the vowel 
again displaced, as /jbeXacva for /jueXav-ya. In the compara- 
tive suffix (yant) the y has generally been lost by assimila- 
tion, but appears as i in tjBlcov and dfjueivcw for dfiev-ycov. 
Another suffix of the same form occurs in many verbs ; this 
takes the same form in Greek, namely 10 for yo, e. g. l&ico, and 
Kalw for /ca(F)-yo, Bcliod for Ba-yo ; and many times the vowel 
is thrown back, as alpco = dp-yo, rewa) = rev-yo*. In the suffix 
ay a which, as I have already said, has given us the verbs in 
-aw, -e&), and -o&>, the spirant is lost altogether. It appears as 
i in the old Ionic genetive-suffix, as Xttttolo for miro-ayo. Next 



1 A tolerably striking example is the often quoted drjioto, which was 
once 8da--yo -<ryo. Four spirants have been resolved or vanished. 

2 See Schleicher, Comp. p. 388, &c. 
8 Theok. xxviii. 10. 

4 Curtius, Temp, und modi, 94. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 229 

original y = e, though much less frequently. This appears in (ii) F=e. 
fceveoq, the Epic and Doric form of icev-yo, " empty," and similar 
forms, arepeos, &c. In the verbs Kvpeco, /cruTreco, &c. which 
stand by tcvpco and eKrvirov, the e may stand for y, or the 
affix may have been e(y)o, (ay a), and the y altogether lost. 
The suffix of the future, syo, was in Doric resolved into 
both crico and aeco : the first is found in the severer Doric of 
Crete and Heraclea, e. g. irpa^lcfiev (Ahrens, II. 210) ; the 
second is seen in the contracted forms irpa^w and irpa^ovvn 
(id. 217). At the beginning of a word y has remained as h ]^ c \ = 
in a few cases. These are the pronoun 0? with its ablative breathing. 
w? 1 ; the Homeric v<j\xlvr), where the root is certainly the 
same as the Sanskrit YUDH (the 6 passing into a before /x), 
ijirap, Latin iecur, Sanskrit yakrit, and v/mecs, where our 
"you" recalls the Sanskrit yu-shme; and a few more 2 . Some- 
times not even the rough breathing remains, as in the Aeolic 
vfAfies and ottl in Sappho 3 . Lastly, the spirant was abso- ( lv ) Y is 

• . . Cost. 

lutely lost within a word, in Attic especially, as in /cevos, &c. ; 
in the simple future -era), where there is no contraction as in 
the Doric to mark the loss : in genetives like Zinrov and 
(Doric and Aeolic) Xttttw for Itttto-o : in the contracted 
verbs universally : and in some Doric and Aeolic words where 
the Attic has l, as 7roe&> 4 , ^aX/ceos 5 , and Aeolic forms as 
v AX/cao? 6 , oXdOea 7 . Other different forms as f or even 8 under 
which original y appears, are not substitutes but the result 
of assimilation or indistinctness of pronunciation. 

Curtius suggests that this y must have had something of 
the guttural about it, as indeed we might have inferred from 

1 See p. 76. 

2 Gr. Et. 354, and Schleicher, Comp. 217. 

3 Frag. 1. 15. 

4 As read in Theok. e.g. viii. 18, &c. by Ahrens, from the best MS. 

5 Id. 11. 36. 

6 Ale. Frag. 21 (9), in Ahrens, 1. 245. 

7 Theok. xxix. 1. 



230 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

its being sounded quite at the back of the palate, and there- 
fore nearer to the gutturals than to any other sound which 
the Greek possesses. He argues from the Epic and Doric 
futures 1 , where the f seems to be produced by the assimi- 
lating force of the cr, K\ay(a)ayco, KXay-aco, fcXa^oo. 
(?) Changes (2) Original 5 retains its place in Greek generally at the 
(i) S=<r. end of roots and words. Thus it generally occurs in ES, 
FEX, H2, &c, except when the suffix which follows begins 
with a vowel or jjl : as in earl, eaOrjs, rjcrrai, &c. ; but e(cr)u?, 
£(o-)-av6-$, rj/juevos, &c. : and indeed the cases, where a vowel 
follows as well as precedes the cr, are more common than the 
others where it does not. But at the end of a suffix it is 
regularly kept — in formative suffixes, as -e? and -o? (crafyk, 
eSo?, &c), and in case-suffixes, as -? of the nominative, -o? 
of the genetive : indeed ? is one of the few letters which 
the Greek could endure at the end of a word. At the 
beginning of a word it is sometimes found, as in craos (<n£s), 
criyri, creXr/vr], &c, but only regularly so when a hard consonant 
follows immediately, as cncafa, crrop-evvvfu, gtci-tos, &c. : here 
the cognate hard protects it from the customary passage into 
(ii)S=rough the rough breathing. This is found constantly, as in eS-o?, 

breathing. #„„,'-. 

€7to), vttvos, b? (the pronoun of the third person, originally 
sva, not the relative ya which takes the same form in 
Greek) ; in all these the analogies of other languages shew 
that cr once began the word. The rough breathing of the 
Greek is sometimes due to a lost cr, which was not initial in 
the word : as ela-rrj/cet for i-crecrTrjKei, through iecrTTj/cec ; per- 
haps also 2 ^fiivo<; mentioned above for 770740/0?, tffiivos : 
when the rough breathing had become regular in the forms 
where cr was dropped it would pass over even to the few 
where it was retained, as rjaTai, though etymologically it 

1 e. g. /c\a£c3 in Theok. vi. 32, where however Ahrens deserts his MS. (K) 
and reads K\aac3. 

2 Schleich. Comp. 219. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 231 

was wrong there : certainly the same root AS, "to sit," in 
Sanskrit has no initial sibilant 1 . With respect to S the 
Greek and Sanskrit usages are directly opposed. The San- 
skrit retains it at the beginning of a word, but suffers it at 
the end of a word under certain conditions to pass into the 
Visarga or slightly heard final breath. Indeed in Sanskrit 
as in Latin the true h is the relic of an aspirate : in Greek it 
never appears but as the representative of a lost spirant. It 
must have been on the wane even when denoted by the 
symbol H, as is proved by its being sometimes omitted in 
old inscriptions 2 : and I agree with Prof. Curtius, that 
although the fact of its omission in the alphabet established 
at Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war, cannot be 
taken to prove its absolute loss — we know it must have 
remained by its aspirating effect on consonants — yet it proves 
at least that it was verging to extinction : moreover the 
sound was probably growing rare when it was so often placed 
wrongly, as tWo?, vScop, vtto, &c. 3 , words which can be shewn 
from other languages to have originally begun with a smooth 
breathing : the same mistake occurred in Latin and for the 
same reason, e. g. when umor, umerus, &c. had h prefixed to 
them : the gradual loss of the h from some forms produced 
an uncertainty in its use, which caused its introduction into 
other forms where it had no business. The Athenians, as I 
have mentioned before, offended most in this respect : in 
Aeolic the loss of the h was so regular, that the tendency 
to introduce it wrongly never gained ground. 

The loss of the rough breathing in Greek leads to much, 
confusion. Thus it is difficult to distinguish in compounds 
the negative a from a which came through a from sa, 

1 Gr. Et. 339. Prof. Curtius however rejects this explanation of a mis- 
placement of sound (p. 618), preferring to suppose a more late mistake. No 
doubt such did occur, but when other causes can be given, these have surely 
the first claim to be regarded. 

2 Gr. Et. 612. 3 lb. 618. 



232* CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Luct. 

"with," except by the sense, e.g. in dBek^os, where we are 
guided to the derivation aa-Se\(f)o- } born of the same womb, 
by the Sanskrit sa-garbha, which is perhaps the same word, 
though the change of g to 8 is very difficult. 
(Hi) S is Frequently there is no trace of the a left at all. Its loss 

lost ' at the beginning of a word before a liquid or nasal, as (S)PT, 

(a)vvos, &c, will come under the general head of loss in 
consonantal groups. But the loss which has produced most 
effect on the language is its falling out between two vowels, 
in verbs as tvitttj from TWTe(V)<zt, in nouns as yevovs from 
ryeve(<T)os. To this very important rule there are hardly any 
exceptions; and these are principally where the loss of the 
a would have caused great confusion. Thus if the a had 
been allowed to fall out e.g. in tclgi^ (from tcl-ti-s) the 
result would have been the same as the dative of the article. 
Therefore in these derivative nouns, and in inflections like 
tl0t](ti and TiOecrai, and in some few other cases the Greeks 
used sufficient effort to retain the spirant. The contractions 
resulting from its regular and constant loss have been de- 
scribed systematically under the diphthongs. 
(3) Changes (3) The remaining spirant v was known to the Greeks 
^ y = p later than y by a distinct symbol, the Digamma, as it was 
called from its form. This F,. as is well-known, is found on 
old Aeolic and Doric inscriptions, and unmistakeable traces 
of its presence (as well as of the other semivowel) are to 
be found in Homer; not indeed with perfect regularity: 
sometimes e.g. we find ISeiv and sometimes fihelv 1 ', this is 
quite natural at a time when a sound was dying out : the 
wonder would rather be if it occurred regularly. There 
seems to be no reason to suppose (what is possible on pho- 

1 Thus in Iliad 1. 203, we read 

?; tva vflpiv i'Stjs ' Ayajbii/nuovos 'Arpeidao; 
but in line 262 

ov yap 7rw tolovs tdov dvepas, ovbe Fidojp.ai. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 233 

netic grounds) that either of the other spirants y or v passed 
into F before they disappeared. F is the representative of 
original v, and of that only, in spite of one or two mistakes 
in inscriptions, natural at a time when the ?;-sound had 
become almost as strange as y, but the symbol F was still 
remembered 1 . That the sound was the same as that of the 
English w, not v, is most probable from the easy transition 
of the semivowel to the vowel, and vice versa. 

Examples of the symbol F in Aeolic and Doric are to 
be found in Ahrens 2 . Thus we have Fot in Sappho II. 1 and 
?€L7T7]v (i.e. elirelv), id. xxvi. 2; though here, as well as in 
Homer, it was often omitted; e.g. (paevvbv el&os (Sappho ill. 
2), though VID probably retained the v-sound at least as 
long as any other word. In spite indeed of the term " Aeolic 
digamma," used by grammarians, the evidence of the surviv- 
ing fragments would seem to shew that the Aeolic commonly 
changed v to u, or hardened it (by dissimilation generally) to 
ft; it was retained however more regularly by the Boeotian 
variety of the Aeolic, which resembled the Doric more than any 
other 3 . In Doric we have the evidence of numerous glosses of 
Hesychius 4 , where indeed the symbol used is V, but where it is 
absolutely certain that the F must be replaced, the mistake 
being that of the copyist:, it is inconceivable that y> which 
has no connection with v, should be found in so many words, 
where traces of v are found in other dialects. Also F occurs 
in tolerable frequency in inscriptions of the old Doric; e.g. 
in words like /cXt'Fo?, alfel (compare aevoni), &c. But even 
from these it is clear that the letter was rapidly passing out 
of common use. 

It is resolved into v in 810 certainly in common Greek; (It) V=v* 



1 See Gr. Et. 354. 

2 Dial Grace 1. 30, &c; 11. 42, &c. 

3 See numerous examples from inscriptions in Ahrens, 1. 169, &c, 
* Id. 11. 53, &c. 



234 



CONSONANTAL CHANGE. 



[Lect. 



(m) v= 

rough 
breathing. 



Sporadic 
substitutes 
of v. 
(iv) V=p. 



and in Aeolic we have forms like %eu« for %eF<w, irvevoy for 
7rv€?o>), where the letter is entirely lost in Attic Greek. In 
all these the v is the radical vowel, intensified in the present- 
stem; but it must have taken the w-sound (that is, F) before 
the vowel co: which was then written as v by the Aeolic 
when they lost the symbol F. The v is also found in the 
Ionic jo wo?, the genetive of 70^1; instead of yovfos 1 : in 

[JLOVVOS for fJLOV-VO?, &c. 

It appears as the rough breathing at the beginning of 
a word; so that all the spirants in Greek can be resolved 
into h. This is best seen by comparison with the Latin: 
eWepo? = uesper ; evvvfii has the same root as ues-tis. The 
rough breathing thus produced is liable to the same affec- 
tions as that which represents <r; thus we have eadrj*;'. lotto p 
(whence lotto p la) came to have the smooth breathing in time, 
as the verb (Ih^ev) seems very early to have had. 

These are the regular substitutes for v, found to some 
extent in all dialects. But there are others very difficult to 
explain, which occur sporadically, or in one dialect only. 
Thus in the Laconian v appears commonly hardened to /?; 
e.g. as in fiepyov (where the original v is shewn by our 
"work"), in /3eVo? for ero? (Latin uetus, originally a "year," 
whence the adjective ueter-nus, as diurnus from dies), and 
many others. And one example common to all Greek is 
given by the common verb fiovXojjiaL, w T hich is the Ionic form 
of j3o\-yo-/jLcu, Aeolic /36\\o/jLcli, and severe Doric /3oo\o{icll. 
That the original consonant was v seems clear from Sanskrit 
vri (VAR), Latin uolo, Gothic vil-jan, and Sclav, vol-it-i 2 : it 
is scarcely to be supposed that all the other languages 
agreed to weaken a sound preserved only by the Greek. 
This /3 then, like the Laconian varieties given above, must be 
regarded as a strengthening, though there is no apparent 



Comp. 222. 



2 Gr. Et, 483. 



XL] SUBSTITUTIOX. 235 

reason for it. V sometimes passed into j3 before p or X in 
the Aeolic, as we shall see hereafter; but here the reason is 
obvious, the influence of the following sound: but no such 
cause can be assigned for these initial changes. Was the 
Laconian /3 an exceptionally weak sound, itself hardly 
stronger than vl I think this possible, though I cannot 
prove it. Curtius thinks 1 that o and v may have had a 
dissimilating effect on the F, just as we saw in Latin that 
vu was regularly avoided; and Curtius thinks that ferb-ui 
from few- and bub-ile from bov- are due to this principle 2 . 
So perhaps the j3 in ^oyXofiat may be due to the combined 
influence of o and X: but this principle will not explain the 
Laconian words where o does not occur more than any other 
vowel. 

Another variation of v into /jl has been often assumed, (») 7=^. 
and is fully investigated by Curtius 3 . I cannot here follow 
him in his examination of every word in which the change 
is possible: he allows it for about half-a-dozen; in others he 
thinks that a different relationship is more probable. With 
his main result I agree; that the change is probable for an 
exceedingly small list of words, scarcely more than those in 
which /jl passes in obscure dialects into ft. He allows the 
change for fidXevpov 4 from FaA, whence aXico, to grind corn. 
Max Miiller 5 thinks that here and in some other words initial 
p has been dropped, and refers aXevpov to MAR, whence 
Latin mola, &c. Curtius denies the loss of initial fi, as also 
the transition from /jl, a common and easy sound, to v, a sound 
for which the Greeks had no liking, and which was becoming 
very uncommon. This argument, I think, is strong ; and it 
will account for the change of F to fi, although to us the 



1 lb. 515. 

2 See however Corssen, Krit. Beitr. 165, and Schleicher, 255. 
■ pp. 520—526. 4 Theok. xv. 116. 

5 11. 323. 



236 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Leot. 

latter may seem the harder sound. The two are pronounced 
so closely together that in chance cases the Greeks, wishing 
to avoid v, might easily slip into fi. Other words, in which 
Curtius allows the change, are //,a\\o? (Latin uillus), fiekSo- 
fjLcu by eXBo/jiai or UxSofiac (where again the fi may have 
been lost), fjudpTrrco by Sanskrit VARK, {ioXttls by i\7rls 
(a dialectical variety in Hesychius), and dfjbj>rjv by avyftv* 
It is commonly assumed in /-totr^o? by ocrxps and jju^pvco 1 by 
ipv(D. It will be seen that in all these cases there is much 
uncertainty. I may mention here the pretty certain change 
of af(i)-vo<; — from avi, Greek oFt — into dfivos, though this is 
not substitution, but arises from the influence of the v. 

The change of F into 7 is more strange. It occurs in no 
common word, but is supported by some rare dialectical 
forms, which need not here detain us a . 

I have thus shewn the different simple sounds to which 
the spirants sank in Greek, and how they sometimes passed 
out leaving no mark at all. Further changes worked 
by them will be found under the head of Assimilation, 
and still more when we come to treat of indistinct arti- 
culation. 
77. Subati- The spirants in Latin have been also very considerably 
the spirants affected ; but not in any way which so profoundly influenced 
m Latm. ^e cnarac ter of the language as the changes above-mentioned 
modified the Greek. The Latin had indeed no special sym- 
bols for y and v; but the sounds were denoted pretty regu- 
larly by i and u; they had not nearly so many substitutes 
as we saw in the Greek. 
(1) Changes (1) First, y had its full sound preserved by % at the be- 
(i) Y=i. ginning of words, as iug-um, ius, &c; and between two 
vowels, as plebeins, aio, cuius, &c. 8 . After consonants the 
i might be either the vowel, or it might still have the semi- 

1 Theok. 1. 29. 2 See Gr. Et. 527. 

8 Comp. 252. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 237 

vowel sound; e.g. princip-ium 1 , conubium 2 , &c. It is fre- 
quently lost altogether, e.g. in the verbs of the first and {ii) Yis 
second conjugation, where the a-o and e-o represent the os ' 
Indo-European and Sanskrit ay a; the original a being split 
up as in Greek: it is dropped in oh(y)icio and 6b(y)ex, and 
other compounds of iacio: rarely in comparatives, as min- 
[i)or; in ero, which stands for es-yo. These examples are 
given by Schleicher 3 . From them it is clear that the semi- 
vowel sound was in the main preserved by the Italians, only 
with no symbol to distinguish it from the cognate vowel. 

(2) 8, unlike the Greek a, is retained regularly before ( 2 ) Changes 
a vowel, and sometimes before consonants at the beginning # fg_ 
of a word; but frequently lost at the end, at least in the 
common pronunciation, and in the older poetry; but re- 
placed through the influence of the Greek rules, in the 
nominatives of nouns of the O-declension, as bono-s, not 
in those of the A-declension, as advena(s), nor in the genetives 
of the A-, 0-, or E-stems. Examples are given in plenty by 
Corssen 4 from inscriptions of the age of the Second Punic 
War, of nominatives where the s was not written: but it 
reappears regularly at the end of the second century B.C.: 
by the beginning of the fourth century A.D., final s was 
again entirely lost 5 . S would seem in Latin to have been 
sounded strongly when initial, and generally before or after 
consonants: but weakly between two vowels, and after n, 
which was itself weakly pronounced before s, and often 
entirely vanished 6 ; so that s was really in the same position 

1 Hor. Od. in. 6. 6. 

2 Lucr. in. 776, and Munro's notes : I think the evidence is in favour of 
the long u in the Augustan age. 

3 Comp. 252. Corssen (Krit. Beitr. 498) would derive -dum and -dem 
from dyam, i.e. divam. 

4 i 2 . 286. 5 Id. i 2 . 294. 

6 e.g. cosol for consul, on the tomb of Scipio Barbatus, formn()i)sux, &0. 
See p. 81. 



238 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

as if a vowel had immediately preceded it. This view might 
seem to be contradicted by the fact that there is often a 
wavering between s and ss, e.g. causa and caussa, usus and 
ussus: and similar waverings have been already cited as 
evidence of a strong sound. But here ss would seem to be 
in general etymologically correct, the first s being commonly 
the result of assibilation of the final letter of the root; then 
the customary weak pronunciation of s so placed caused the 
loss of one of the two. There is good evidence for the use of 
ss down to a late period in the best MSS. of Virgil and 
Quintilian's express statement 1 as to the usage of Cicero. 
(U) S=r, This weak pronunciation of s between two vowels led natu- 
rally to the substitution for it of the weaker r. Thus we 
find Lares instead of the Lases of the Carmen Arvale, ara 
instead of asa which is found in every other Italian dia- 
lect 2 ; quaero is the younger form of quaeso; the gene- 
tives arboris, muris, &c, are from bases arbos, mus, &c, 
which in later times sometimes allowed even the s which 
marked the nominative case to sink to r, as arbor: in 
the genetives plural r is the substitute for the old s which 
in Greek fell out altogether; compare dearum for deasdm 
with 0ed(<r)a>v 6ewv z : plurimus is the plus-imus of the 
Carmen Saliare. This change of s to r is also found before 
n and m; thus verna is vesna*, veternus in vetus-nus, the e 
being due to the following r: and carmen is most probably 
cas-men 5 , in spite of the Greek iroi^a which would lead us 
to derive carmen from KAR "to make" which is undoubtedly 
found in cre-are: but we have Casmenae the Latin Muses, 
which would be inexplicable except from KAS, the Sanskrit 
cams, " to say" or " praise." Lastly s sinks to r at the end 
of a word after a vowel, as in amor, and arbor just men- 

1 1. 7. 20. 2 Corssen, I 2 . 229. 

3 I do not mean that deos is the same word as dens, see p. 24. 

4 See p. 77. 6 Krit. Beitr. 406. 



XI. J SUBSTITUTION. 239 

tioned. According to Cicero, Papirius Crassus (consul 336), 
was the last of his race who was called by the old name 
Papisius: without pressing this statement too far, we may 
fairly conclude that the change was growing general about 
that time. 

Closely connected with this weakening of s is the appear- Old Latin 

n 1,1 • , i n • r\ i an d Italian 

ance 01 z under the same circumstances both in Oscan and z . 
in Umbrian. From menzaru (i.e. mensarum) and horz (i.e. 
hortus) we may safely infer that the other Italian dialects 
possessed a distinct symbol to denote the weak s (our English 
z in zed and French z) which had died out in Latin soon 
after the time of the XII Tables. The loss was a real one, 
for the hard and soft s are very distinct sounds: they are 
given by our "rice" and "to rise 1 ." Z does not reappear 
at Rome till the common introduction of Greek words: 
when it was again used, but to represent f, a very different 
sound. When it appears in Plautine manuscripts it is through 
a confusion with the later z: for the Romans of Plautus' 
time undoubtedly represented z by s or ss according as it 
was initial or medial: sona 2 (£<ovrj) or badisso 3 . 

Sometimes, though only irregularly, s vanishes altogether (*») Sis 
between two vowels, just as it did in the Greek. Thus we 
have uim which must be for uisim from ids, for uires stands 
for uis-es. Ver for ueser (?e(a)ap) has been already men- 
tioned. Similarly the s is lost in genetives like die(s)i, 
whence eventually die, plebe(s)i, &c. 4 

(3) Finally v in Latin has much the same history as y. i3)Ckmgt 
It is represented by u, e. g. in uideo, nouos, ouis. Some- (*) V= u. 
times this u is simply the vowel, as in ecus (equos), relicuos 5 , (*j v 7S 

LOSt. 

&c. Not unfrequently it fell out, like y. e.g. in s(u)ibi 

1 Max Miiller, 11. 133. 

2 So Trin. 8G2, ed. Brix : sector sonarius, i.e. a cut-purse. 

3 See Corsseu, i 2 . 295. 4 Krit. Beitr. 465. 

5 e.g. in Lucr. 1. 560. Perhaps the length of the first syllable may mark 
an assimilated d, red-Ucuos : cf. sella for sed-la. 



240 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

and t(u)ibi, the roots being sva and tva ; in de(v)os, 
so(v)os, &c. : in verbs like fluont from FLUV, and especially 
in the perfects, &c, formed with suffix -vi, e.g. no(ue)runt, 
no(ue)ram, &c. Further examples, if required, will be found 
in the Compendium 1 . 
Ynot=m. The supposed change of v into m in mare, compared with 
Sanskrit vari, " water," is rejected by Corssen 2 rightly, I 
think. He shews that the root var is preserved in Italian 
river names as Varusa, Varranus y &c, so that mare more 
probably belongs to MAR in the sense of "the waste." 
The first derivation may seem better as regards sense, but 
must be rejected as sinning against the laws of sound: the 
second need not be accepted, or only provisionally till another 
is discovered which satisfies the sense better, and is equally 
possible phonetically. 

4. Changes of the Aspirates in Latin. 

Lastly, I shall take under the head of Substitution the 
numerous changes of the aspirates in Latin. Some indeed 
of them seem to be due to Loss: others, if Corssen's explana- 
tion of them be true, should rather come under the head 
of indistinct articulation. But since neither of these causes 
can be certainly made out, and since if divided the history 
of the aspirates would be less intelligible, I have thought 
it better to put the whole of the changes together under the 
simplest head : at least one sound has been substituted for 
another. 
The Latin The most remarkable point in the history of the aspi- 
aspiratef. ra | es m m _L a tJ n i s that each of them can be represented by 
one symbol, the peculiar Italian /. That this / is no aspi- 
rate is obvious, if only from the fact that it has not the 
power of the Latin momentary sounds to assimilate a nasal 

1 pp. 253, 254. a Krit, Beitr. 237. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 241 

which precedes it: Ave have im-petus for example, but 
only inficio 1 : this shews that the /is quite different from the 
Greek <£, which has the assimilating power, as in ifjucpalvco 2 . 
For the difference of sound between these two, we have 
Priscian's well-known dictum: that ph is produced " fixis 
labris," but / not. I think this must mean that ph is a 
momentary sound: f is a protracted one. It is the hard 
spirant of the labial class; v is the weak spirant of the same 
class. Corssen indeed objects to the term " spirant" being 
applied to it: and will have it to be nothing less than "a 
toneless (i.e. hard) labiodental fricative sound (Reibelaut) 
with a strong breath 3 ." We shall be better able to decide 
upon its nature when we have seen its use. 

It regularly occurs as the representative of initial BH. Frepre- 
This we should expect from its labial character. Thus we nal BH 
have /an from BHA, whence Greek Qd-vai; fui from BHU; a £™ n at 
fugio from BHUG, &c. But it is hardly less frequently nin 9 °f a 
found as the representative of initial DH. That aspirate has 
left no Latin exponent of its own kind, at once dental and as- 
pirate, or even a dental spirant : / has taken the place. Thus 
fumus is the Latin derivative of DHU the same in form as 
Ovfios, and Sanskrit dhllma; fores represents dvdra (Sk.) and 
0vpa: firmusis from DHAR "to hold firmly;" a root which 
gives an extraordinary number of derivatives in Latin 4 , 
including formido " stiffening fear," forma, forum, and many 
names of " strongholds," as Formiae, Ferentinum, Forentum 
and Ferentia: many more examples are given by Corssen. 
Both the labial and dental aspirate are regularly represented 
at the beginning of a word by/ 

But there are even cases where initial / represents GH. sc 



even Ga. 



1 Corssen however (i 2 . 138) quotes some examples from the Corpus, as 
com-flucmt, im fronte. But these are certainly exceptional. 

2 See Curtius in the Zcitschrlft, u. 333. 

3 i 2 . 173. 4 Corssen, i 2 . 148. 

P. L. 16 



242 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

Such are fel which seems undoubtedly to be the same as 
%o\?7 our "gall," that is from original glial; the verbs quoted. 
by Priscian and Festus, futire and futare, with futilis are 
from the root FU the same as XT in %eFo>; formus and 
feruor stand by Sanskrit gharma our "warm," while the 
Greek shews a change from the guttural to the dental 
in Oepfios. Commonly however there is another form be- 
ginning with h, existing side by side with that in f, and 
used by educated men 1 ; we hove faedus, but classical haedus, 
our " goat," where the Teutonic has kept the g of the original 
GH: fordeum and hordeum; fariolus and hariolus, Greek 
X°p-$V> & c - This / for gh is only initial. 
In Latin If we continue our search, we shall find that this f does 

the h was na j. occur m uch in the middle of Latin words. We have 

commonly 

dropped in scrofa the pig, conceived as the " grubber," by the side of 
of a word, scrob-s 2 , and probably scrib-ere. But as a rule we shall find 
that BH has generally under these circumstances passed 
into b: e.g. ambo, tibi, lubet 3 , nubes 4 , &c, with others given 
by Schleicher (Cornp. 249). But it is an instructive fact 
that by the side of the Latin b there is found / in the other 
Italian dialects. Thus Safinus is the Oscan for Sabinus; 
the proper names Alftus and Alfenus should be compared 
with the Latin Albius and Albinius: Orfius with Latin 
orbus, &c. 5 The same mutatis mutandis applies to DH: this 
is d in Latin medius (madh-ya), in aedes 6 , in dedo, condo, &c, 
from DHA " to place," &c. : but the Oscan for " middle " is 
mefia ; and the Oscan Bufium, with the proper names Mufus, 
Rufinus 7 , &c, seem to shew that rufus " red " was borrowed 
by the Romans, their own word being ruber. The root 
from which the two forms came is certainly RUDH, the 

1 Krit. Beitr. 212, &c. 2 Corssen, i 2 . 140. 

3 See p. 85. 4 See p. 65. 

8 Corssen, i 2 . 147., 6 See p. 120. 
7 Corssen, i 2 . 151. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 243 

Sanskrit rudhira, Greek e-pv0-po?, our "red:" ruber there- 
fore shews us that in Latin b can represent medial DH; as 
we see also from uber (ovOap, " udder ") — but Ufens, Aufidus, 
in different parts of Italy; from verbum a "word," and barber 
a " beard :" in these last two words the traces of original DH 
are preserved by the Teutonic languages with great fidelity, 
and by them only. 

It is clear then that both DH and BH were regularly 
represented in Italy by f: though the Latin alone preferred 
the more distinct d and b within a word. At an early period 
the DH must have passed into bh in Italy: so that from 
original rudhra came the old Italian rubhro which then split 
into Italian rufru and Latin rubro just on the same analogy 
(as Curtius points out 1 ) as old Italian tibhi (where BH is 
original, compare Sanskrit tubhyam) split into Umbrian tefe, 
Latin tibi. This weakening of dh to bh is neither impossible 
nor unnatural : we have already seen how inexactly^ was 
sounded in Latin, so that it could pass into both I and r. 
But I think we may believe that the breath at the end of 
each aspirate was somewhat strongly sounded in Latin, so that 
the distinction between the b and the d was not appreciable, 
and therefore they sank to the same spirant f. This view 
appears to me to be supported by the fact that / from bh 
sometimes passes into h : as in harena for the old Italian 
and Sabine fas-ena: haba exists by the side of f aba: herba 
is most likely from BIIAIi, compare cfroppr) 2 ; and mihi 
undoubtedly stands for rn.ibhi, the loss of the b being possibly 
due, as Curtius suggests, to the dissimilating influence of 
the labial m. Now there are tolerable indications that h 
was a strong sound in the old Latin: although in the Augus- 
tan age no doubt it had grown weak 3 , and was constantly 
dropped, as in (]i)anser, (h)olu8, ecc. But the strength of the 
breath in former times, when the changes between different 

5 Zeitsch. it. 334. 2 Corsfon, i 5 . 102. :1 Id. 1-. 106, &©. 

1 fi— 2 



244 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

classes took place, would be a good reason for the change be- 
tween strong h and / with a strong breathing. And the same 
conclusion may be drawn from the occasional substitution of/ 
for GH mentioned above. I pass now to the more regular 
changes of GH, to complete the history of the aspirates. 
Changes of GH is generally represented by g when not initial. 
Thus ang-or is from AGH, whence ax<>$, &c; lig-urio is 
from LIGH (Xet^o)), &C. 1 ; when it stands at the beginning 
of a word as in gramen, granum, grando, &c, it seems to be 
generally followed by r, which absorbed the breath but left 
the g 2 . Initial GH is regularly represented by h ; as hiemps 
(GHI, whence xi*wv, &c.), heri (Sanskrit hyas for ghyas, 
Greek %0€? where the 6 is peculiar 3 ) hostis (from GHAS, 
whence our " guest : " hospes may not improbably be the 
"protector of strangers," ghas-pati from PA: gospoda is a 
"host" in Polish 4 ), and many others: h is even found at the end 
of a root in YEH and TRAH : I have already said 5 that the 
h here must have been strongly guttural, or it could not 
have changed to c in uec-tum, trac-si. These, with the 
irregular initial f, are the substitutes of GH. 
The aspi- From these facts we see that the aspirates, when medial, 

Initial pass are regularly represented by the corresponding unaspirated 
into so ft g i n Latin (though not in common Italian) ; when initial 

OlCClZ/hSy 

when me- they are represented by a sound which was originally no 
soft letters, doubt a weak aspirate, but was probably at an early time no 
more than a spirant or breathing : nay more, the one single 
sound/ can stand for all the original aspirates, probably as I 
have suggested from this being pronounced with a strong 
breath, which neutralised the distinction of class. This 
variation has nothing in it contrary to the usual character of 
phonetic change. 

1 Comp. 245. 2 See Grassmann, Zeitsch. xn. 89, &c. 

3 See Gr. Et. 438. 4 Benfey, Gr. Wurz. Lexicon, n. 210. 

6 p. 60. 



XL] SUBSTITUTION. 245 

Corssen suggests 1 that it may have been caused by an 
"irrational" u springing up after the letter, so that gh and 
dh should become respectively ghu and dhu, then both turn 
to fu and so to /. This is very possible : and is supported at 
least for gh by the forms anguis (originally aghi-s) and 
breuis, i. e. breghu-is ; also by the analogous springing up of 
u after g, as ting-u-o, ning-u-o. But how are we to account 
for the appearance of g, d, and b ? These are stronger forms 
than gh, dh, bh : and yet there is no apparent reason for 
any strengthening. 

I suggest the following explanation. We have seen that Explana- 
the Graeco-Italians brought with them into Europe the aspi- appearance 
rates gh, dh, bh: sounds which have been explained as soh°f theso ft 
letters followed by a breath. Such pronunciation is said to 
be retained in India. But it does not seem to have suited 
any European nation. Among the Graeco-Italians the 
breath appears to me to have changed into the spiritus 
asper ; whatever the difference in sound between the original 
breath and the spiritus asper w T as originally, it must have 
been very slight, consequently the change could not be 
difficult. Such a change seems to me to explain the subse- 
quent history of the aspirates in Greek and Latin. The 
aspirate had become really a double sound : and the two 
component parts acted upon each other. In Greek (as we 
shall see) the second part assimilated the first. In Latin 
one part drove the other out and so caused loss : at the be- 
ginning of a word the first part fell away (conformably to 
the regular Latin usage, as we shall see hereafter), wholly 
in gh, perhaps with some slight remnant of sound in bh, 
both when original, and when it represented dh : when the 
aspirate was not initial, Italian usage differed ; the Latins 
preferred to retain the first part, though even among them 
/ is sometimes found : the rest of Italy kept the / here also. 

1 \\ 100. 



246 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

I may add that tlie difference in the Greek and the Italian 
methods is quite in accordance with the usual treatment of 
compound sounds in the two languages. 

Corssen 1 regards the Latin b as produced from the Italian 
/: of g he gives, I think, no other explanation than that it 
is "aus gh verschobenV No doubt we might have expected 
to find f universal throughout Italy ; but we do not so hud 
it, unless we agree with Corssen that Latin b comes through 
the middle step f: and apparently to explain the strength- 
ening, he suggests that this b is here a weaker sound, more 
like the Greek ft 3 . But where is there any proof of this ? 
He has himself shewn elsewhere that Latin b is the " ordi- 
nary labial media V Surely it is at least equally permissible 
to regard the Latin b as a dialectical variation, dating from 
the earliest times. Indeed I am entirely unable to enter 
into Corssen's view of the origin of the /. He believes 5 
that the Italians did not bring bh with them into the penin- 
sula. Then they must have brought f. But whence did 
they bring it ? The Greeks have no such sound : it must 
have been developed after the separation of the two races, 
and therefore presumably in Italy. Corssen argues that 
there is no trace of bh in Italy at all. But according to my 
view, b is a distinct trace of it. Secondly, he says, that no 
European nation had kept the bh. But the Greeks must 
have done so ; else where did they get their (j> ? Whatever 
may be the reason of the hard aspirates in Greek, there can 
be no doubt that they were derived in some way from the 
soft aspirates. Lastly, if the Italians did not bring bh with 
them, why did they bring ghl This Corssen probably 
admits to be Italian, for he does not derive g from h. But 
surely gh and bh stand or fall together 6 . 

1 i 2 . 140. 2 Id. i 2 . 91. 

3 i 2 . 171. 4 i 2 . 126. 6 i 2 . 140. 

6 In the same page where Corssen denies the existence of bh in Italy, he 
makes the strange statement that the Zend alone of all the Indo-Germanic 



XLJ SUBSTITUTION. 247 

Thus, then, the forms under which the aspirates in the 
middle of a word are represented in Latin, result partly from 
Loss, if my view be correct, or from irregular Substitution 
according to Corssen : the initial forms are probably produced 
by indistinct articulation. But, as I said above, since the 
reason for the changes cannot be certainly assigned, I have 
preferred to consider them under the most general head. 

languages has preserved the bh. He here most unaccountably overlooks the 
Sanskrit ; and the Zend (at least according to Schleicher's Compendium) 
has not preserved the bh, which it represents by b and w. These can of 
course only be oversights, but they are strange ones. The passage is now in 
the second enlarged edition. 



LECTURE XII. 

CONSONANTAL CHANGE {continued). 

II. Loss. 

1. Loss of Aspiration in Greek. 

This subject may be taken first under the head of Loss, 
since the result is the same as that which we have been 
discussing in the last lecture — the loss of the breathing 
which is the second component of the aspirates. But this 
result is much less frequent in Greek than in Latin. Loss of 
the h is not the common end of the Greek aspirates ; it occurs 
in very few certain cases, which are thoroughly examined by 
Curtius 1 . But the principle seems to me the same as that 
which operates regularly in Latin in the middle of a word ; 
though its action in the Greek is only irregular. 

Loss of the breathing is generally assumed in yews, 
iyco and fieyas : the corresponding consonant in Sanskrit in 
all these is h for gh : so that GH would seem to be the ori- 
ginal letter, did not the Qothic shew us hinnus, ik, and 
milcils (Scotch " mickle") : and the k here points to g as the 
original, and to gh as being a Sanskrit weakening. Cases in 

1 Gr. Et. 458— 467. 



Lect. XII.] LOSS. 249 

which BH has turned to /3 under the influence of a preceding- 
nasal are rather the results of assimilation : e. g. dafxftos 
(TA<I>), ofifipos (Sanskrit abhra) ; they are few in all. It 
seems to me that the undoubted cases of pure loss are con- 
fined to the hard aspirates which, as we have already seen, 
are peculiarly Greek developments, where the second part, 
the spiritus asper, was likely enough to drop off and be 
lost. Thus we have the roots OPTX, KPT<I>, &c. (as seen 
in opvcraa), /cpvcfxi), but opvyrj and Kpuirra) 1 : we have AA© 
but akhaivw ; EAT® but iirr/XuB- ; fipe/jLetv by the side of 
fremere, and not impossibly cf>6pfuy];: Xa/AJSaveLv but \d- 
<f)vpov and ayii(/>/,-\a</>-?7? ; here also the Sanskrit has LABH. 
Why this tendency to drop the rough breathing should act 
just on these few words and not on others we cannot explain : 
all sporadic change is capricious ; we can do no more than 
assign a plausible cause for it ; perhaps here the rolling 
sound of p and A, (one of which occurs in all the words) may 
have been strong enough to cause the rough breathing to be 
felt not necessary though optional ; just as we saw in the 
last lecture (p. 244) that h was dropped from an original 
aspirate followed by r in gramen, &c. in Latin. 

Curtius remarks 2 that this change in Greek was not 
likely to be frequent ; the tendency in Greek lies the other 
way, as we shall hereafter see. To this opposite tendency, 
he adds, are due the forms Bexofiat, Teu^w, &c. by the side of 
heKOfxai, tvk-os ; avQi<$ from the Homeric cl\jti<$> &c. ; in all 
these cases the Ionic has kept the original form, not weak- 
ened a stronger one. But there is certainly weakening in 
cases like the Ionic air ov : not of course in the preposition 
but in the pronoun, which loses its rough breathing in 
pronunciation to suit the Ionic love of soft sounds, though 
the symbol was retained in writing, to avoid confusion. 

1 Gr. FA. 403. - lb. 458. 



CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 



'1. Loss of one or more out of a group of Consonants. 

Possible This is, perhaps, the most natural form of loss. Heavy 

fAesc* °~ r masses of consonants become unendurable in all languages, 
groups. though all do not deal with them in the same way. It is 
true that they often seem to be radical; and therefore it 
might be argued that what our fathers could endure might 
have been endured by their children. But in reply to this 
I may say, that in roots which contain groups of consonants, 
e.g. STA or SRU, it is very probable we have not reached 
to the ultimate simplest form. Ultimate it is to our analysis 
however, and will probably remain so. I know that some 
philologists contend that all roots originally consisted of a 
single consonant and vowel, or even of a single vowel. This 
is very possible, but if we attempt to cut down the roots 
into simpler forms to suit this theory, we are simply engaging 
in a task for which we have no sufficient data, no guide but 
the analogy of actually occurring simple forms, to which we 
endeavour to make our more complete roots correspond. 
On the other hand though in most cases we cannot discover 
what these simplest forms actually were, this is no reason 
for concluding that there were no simpler forms. Analogy 
is deceptive if we attempt to analyse ; but the fact that we 
can, with tolerable certainty, resolve some compound roots 
into simpler forms 1 , is an indication that such simpler forms 
may exist for others, though we cannot discover them. Thus 
it is possible that SRU may have been at an earlier time 
SAR-U 2 , the U being a formative suffix: then the A may 
have fallen out, leaving SRU, a sound convenient to Hindus, 
Lithuanians, and Germans, but inconvenient to Graeco- 
Italians, as we shall see. But such a simpler form though 

1 See, for example pp. 40 — 42. a For SAlv, see p. 84. 



XII.] LOSS. 2$ i 

possible is quite uncertain; I only give it to shew that 
such heavy consonantal roots may themselves have been the 
result of phonetic change acting in times far beyond our 
small range of vision. 

Sometimes these consonant-groups were certainly not radi- 
cal but caused by combining roots and suffixes; sometimes 
even by the involuntary springing out of a parasitic sound 
after the original consonant. But however they were produced, 
they were governed by the same laws. I shall therefore not 
dwell on their origin here, leaving the account of parasitic 
sounds to a later lecture. I shall consider the loss under 
three heads; initial, medial, and final. It is never very 
common in the Greek, because, as I have already said, the 
Greeks preferred where possible to assimilate one sound to 
the other. In Latin it is always common; but, as might be 
expected, generally sporadic. 

In Greek no consonants seem to be lost at the beginning i. Initial 
of a word except the spirants s and v; and even these fall cipaliy of s 
out generally before a protracted, rarely before a momentary andv b £ th 
sound. Thus s is lost in pu for apu, vv-6s for avvbs (page 69, and Latin. 
where it was suggested that the oldest form was sunuso), p,ip- 
Ljjbva (Sanskrit SMAR), &c. This loss is rare before k or it, and 
even then traces are left of the fuller sound ; thus we have 
both aKCLiTTOi and Kcnrejos, airekeOos and 7rt'A,e#09: it is rather 
commoner before t, as ravpos (by the German stier), aTeyos, 
and Te'709, &c. These changes it will be observed are Graeco- 
Italian, and may very likely have taken place before the 
separation. The second consonant would seem to be lost in 
gvv for cncvv. %vv shews misplacement of the ok just as ott 
was liable to change to the commoner iro (yfr) : kvv, however, 
is preserved in the name Kuvovpia (i.e. con-jinia 1 ). 

Original v is lost in pi^a for Fpl^a, the 0. H. G. wurza, 

1 For further examples see Curtius, dr. EL. 621—6, whence the above 
are taken. 



252 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

and modern "wurzel;" patcos is from VRAK. Since the 
Latins had radix by pl^a, and lacer, perhaps lacerna, by 
pa/cos, this loss also would seem to be Graeco-Italian. The 
same is not true of prjyvvfii, Latin frango; this form is 
curious. The oldest form of the root seems to be BHRAG, 
for the Gothic is brikan, to "break:" then this BH irregu- 
larly weakened itself to F \ evidenced by Aeolic F/or/f t?, which 
vanished in common Greek: the Latin form is regular 2 . But 
with this exception it would appear that these losses of 
initial spirants were no peculiarity of the Greek; they were 
rather due to a tendency which was acting in Graeco-Italian 
times, and never ceased in Latin, but which was almost 
stopped by the Greeks when left to themselves. The Greeks 
have no objection to hard combinations, like a/c, err, <ttt, at 
the beginning of a word; they dislike the amalgamation of 
different consonants within a word. 

In Latin the regular loss is also of s and v. No real 
Latin word begins with sr, sn, or &m*\ hence we have (paral- 
lel to the Greek losses given above) riuos from SRU, nurus, 
and memor for sme-smor; there is also no initial si, so that 
limits may be our " slime 4 ." Corssen 5 adds another to the 
possible etymologies of the much contested " Rome," by 
deriving it from SRU (Srouma), the "stream-town," and ex- 
plains the name by reference to the insulated condition of 
the old Roma quadrata on the Palatine, before the Tiber 
was kept within its banks. From the same root he also 
very plausibly derives Reate (Sreu-ate) in the high constantly 
inundated valley first drained by Curius Dentatus. Some- 
times s has fallen out before/, as funda (= crfevhovrj) , fides 
a " string," Greek atfri&r), fallo, by cr<£a\\a>. 

1 This weakening occurs also in Yay- (Sk bhanj) but in no other word. 

2 Gr. Et. 476. 

3 Even some borrowed words lose it in Latin, as mijrrlta [crfivpva). 

4 Krit. Beitr. 429 ; but see Gr. FA. 329. 

5 Krit. Beitr. 428. 



XII.] LOSS. 253 

Passing to the momentary sounds we shall find 5 lost 
principally before t; in torus (Gk. crrop), tego (areyo)), and 
many others. Corssen, against Curtius and Max Miiller, 
would derive ton-itru from STAN, found in Greek arevco: 
but this supposes a loss of the s in the Teutonic family as 
well ("thunder," &c), which is very unusual; as far as the 
sense goes, it seems to me better. Sometimes s is lost 
before c, as in caueo (SKAV), cutis by otcuto? and kvtos, is 
from SKTJ, whence comes also cauos, and perhaps caelum; 
casa may be s{c)ad-sa x for scad-ta, the past participle of 
SKAD, "to cover," Sanskrit CHHAD. S may have fallen 
out before p in penuria (<nrdvi$) and pituita (7tvtl£q)) from 
SPU-TU, a lengthened form of SPU (in spuere). Some- 
times st falls away entirely before I, as in lis, locus (the form 
stlocus points to STAL), and latus (stlatus being the past 
participle of STAR, "to strew," and meaning that which is 
strewn, scattered, widened). Hence the distinction between 
nauis stlata, a vessel built broad for merchandise, and nauis 
longa, the man-of-war 2 . 

V is lost in much the same words as in the Greek : lacer 
and radix are given above ; lupus may perhaps be the San- 
skrit vrika; and ros {feparj, or eporf) is connected with 
VRISH. Sometimes, but rarely, the lost v is the second 
letter, as in cam's (kvgjv, Sanskrit gvati; and v is lost, though 
not without leaving its trace in a rather large list of Latin 
words, where original va has passed into 0: such are soror 
(Sanskrit svasri), socer (original svakura), sonus (Sanskrit 
svana), sop>or (root SVAP), &c. The Greek is quite irregu- 
lar in such of these words as it has retained, as e/cvpos, 

VTTVOS, &C. 

Besides this somewhat regular loss of s and v we find Further 
sporadic loss of initial mutes: Latin. 

1 Krit. Beitr. 448. 3 Id. 402. 



254 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lf.ct. 

of C before v, in uermis, Sk. krirni, and Gothic murm-s 1 . 

before I, in lamentum {clamor, &c), laus (CLlf). 
of G before v, in uenter (yao-rijp), and uorare*, uenire (root 
6rFJ., whence Greek ftaiveiv. Gothic kvi- 
man 3 ). 
before n, in notus, women, narrare (see page 47). 
of T before I, apparently in latum for datum (root TOL). 
of D before r, assumed by Corssen 4 in ruere and racemus 
(Sk. drakska); but in neither case is the 
connection certain, 
before v, in uiginti from ^yi: compare fo's {dais) and 

helium (duellum). 
before y, in (D)iouis. 
of P before Z, in teiws for plaetus (compare Sanskrit 
priya), latus (ifkaroi) ; lauere (\oveiv) may 
be from PLU, which occurs in Sanskrit 
and Greek ttXvvelv 5 . 
Connected with this initial loss is the frequent misplace- 
ment of consonants in groups at the beginning of a word. 
Thus Kpahia is Latin cord-; from FRAK ((fypdo-o-a) comes 
farcio, and many other cases occur of a consonant thus 
thrown forward to avoid a heavy consonantal beginning. In 
some, no doubt, it is not quite certain how the consonants 
were placed in the radical form ; but the general tendency is 
unmistakeable. 
Lossofini- I may also mention here the curious loss of c (K), not in 
compounds, but standing alone at the beginning of some 
pronominal words, as (c)ubi, (c)uti, (c)wnde: the c is preserved 
in ali-cubi, ali-(c)unde, &c. Other supposed losses, as aper 
(fcn7rpo<;), amo (Sk. ham), seem to be uncertain. No other 
consonant seems to fall away similarly; the reason here is 
quite uncertain. 

] Krit. Beitr. 2. a See p. 54, 

8 See Krit. Beitr. 57— U. 4 Id. 142. 

5 Id. 150. 



tial c when 

standing 

alone. 



XTL] LOSS. 255 

Loss in the middle of a word is rarer. It is hardly found ii. Medial 
in Greek. Schleicher gives as an example TeTf<£-(a-}#e, where fZncUn >J 
the accumulation of consonants was doubtless too much for f!rc<k - 
the Greek feeling of euphony. The same objection to im- 
possible combinations of sound caused the Ionic forms like 
io-TaXarai for iaraXvraL: the a is here not so much a sub- 
stitute for the lost v as the slight vowel-sound, which was 
still felt to be convenient even between \ and r. A single 
consonant, r, falls out regularly in the 3rd pers. sing, of verbs, 
as (f>€p€(r)c, and in nouns, as Kepa{r)-o<;. This is perhaps a 
further consequence of the Greek dislike to momentary 
sounds at or near the end of a word. 

In Latin the examples are tolerably numerous, but they Common 
are hard to reduce to rule. Schleicher considers that they foriy!^" 
are the results of assimilation: the lost letter has been first Lnttn - 
assimilated, and then vanished in accordance with the old 
Latin rule of not writing the same letter twice 1 . This is 
a very ingenious theory, and may be true; but it is simplest 
to treat the results under the general head of loss. I take 
the examples from Schleicher, who has taken them mainly 
from Corssen. This loss occurs most frequently before 
spirants: 

before s, as di(c)-sco, mid(g)-si, spar(g)-sus (from gparg- 
tus), miles (for milit-s), sua(d)-si; ce(n)sor and 
co(n)sol (in old Latin, but the old forms were 
replaced, though not the original sound); 
so also quotie(n)s, ru(r)8um, and many 
others. 

before y, as rna(g-)ior, se(d)-iur)go, pe(r)-iero, tru(us 
cio, &c. 

before v, as bre(gli)-v-is, le(gli)-v-w, 8ua(d)-U-l8 i &c. 



Cniiij,. 268. 



256 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

It is common also before nasals: 

before n, as lu{c)-na, pi(c)-nus, de(c)-nus, ua(c)-nus, ce(s)- 
na, po(s)no. 

before m, as sti(g)-mulus, exa(g)-men, re(s)-mus, Ca(s)- 
mena. 

It occurs before I apparently in te(x)-la and corpu(s)-lentus. 
Loss is hardly found before any momentary consonant except 
the dentals; thus 

before t, in passive participles, as tor(c)tus, ul{c)-tus; in all 
these the group consists of at least three con- 
sonants. 

before d, the loss being restricted to s, as iu(s)-dex, i(s)- 
dem, di(s)-duco. 

In all these cases it will be observed that the loss is 
confined to the last letter of the root or prefix. The Latin 
tendency to weaken the end of a word seems to have ex- 
tended even to the separate syllables, 
iii. Final Loss at the end of a word extends to single consonants, 

as well as to combinations of them. We have already seen 
that in all languages the accent has a tendency to be thrown 
back as soon as the consciousness of the relative value 
of the different parts of a word becomes obliterated. Pro- 
bably for example, as I have said before, the personal termi- 
nations of the verb bore the accent originally (as in $7]- fit), 
and continued to do so as long as the /u was distinctly felt 
to be the pronoun " I," which limited the idea of " speaking," 
to a single person, the speaker : but when this fact ceased 
to be felt, and fit, was no more than a grammatical suffix, 
the two syllables, which formerly existed side by side with 
some sort of mutual independence, became fused together, 
and the accent almost always fell back. This loss of accent 
made the last syllable comparatively unimportant, and liable 



XII.] LOSS. 257 

to phonetic corruption : and this corruption is found, as a 
general rule, in proportion to the inability of a language to 
accent the last syllable : and therefore Latin, -which never 
accentuates the last syllable, has suffered more od the whole 
from loss than Sanskrit or Greek : this we have already 
seen in the shortening arid loss of its final vowels, and 
shall now see again in its consonantal loss. The sounds thus 
lost will of course differ much for different languages : one 
people found a final sound difficult which presented no diffi- 
culty to another ; thus the Greeks liked final s, which the 
Italians slurred over, weakened, and finally lost. But the 
principle is the same for all languages : final unaccented 
syllables had a tendency to weaken or drop their difficult 
sounds. 

But the operation of this principle could be affected by Monotony 

of conso- 

other causes. In Greek the last syllable is often accented nantai ter- 
and yet weakened, e.g. ruSeis for TiOivrs. And in one in '^.^ 
respect at least the final syllable in Greek seems to have 
suffered more than in Latin. It is more monotonous, a 
great sign of weakness in language. As is well known, the 
Greeks allowed no consonant to end a word but the light- 
sounding v (into which the common Graeco-Italian m of 
verbal and nominal suffixes was therefore changed), a, and 
rarely p : so final consonants were either dropped altogether, 
aa)/j,a(r), €(J>u(t), Sanskrit abhilt; eSei^a, Sanskrit adifoham; 
Trarepa, (patrem) ; or softened, if dentals, into a : as repas, 
7rpo?, 8g?, rervepe^ ; if p, into v, as p,ovo-av, ervirrov 1 . Latin, 
on the contrary, allows considerable variety of final conso- 
nants. But there is no monotony in the final vowels of the 
Greek, whereas, as we have seen, in Latin a final vowel tends 
to sink to e. This then is the explanation of the obvious diffi- 
culty, that final accented syllables are yet weakened in the 
Greek. The vivid life of the Greek vowels overpowered the 

1 Cum],. 286, fee 
P.L. 17 



258 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

final consonant or consonants, and reduced them to absolute 
uniformity, or completely extinguished them. The power of 
the vowel over the consonant in Greek which is seen here, may 
be contrasted with the power of the consonant in Latin to 
assimilate the vowel 1 : nothing could better shew the differ- 
ence in the genius of the languages. 

When a group of consonants ended a word, they were 
sometimes all dropped, as in <yd\a(/cT), ava vocative of 
dvcucT ; generally the last was retained, ™0e/? (riOevrs), akrjOrj? 
(dXrjOecr + ?), with compensatory lengthening of the vowel, 
the vowel-sound being naturally prolonged to fill up the gap 
of the missing consonant. Sometimes however the first con- 
sonant was kept with the same lengthening of the vowel, 
probably from analogy, as \e<ya)v (Xiyovrs), irotfJUTqv (ttol- 
fievs) ; I infer that the first method is the older, from the 
probability of forms like $i8ov<; (BlBovts), being older than 
Xiycov (\eyovrs;) : but how the change arose I cannot say. 

The effects of this frequent loss of dentals and spirants 
on the Greek vocalism have been already mentioned under 
the head of the Greek diphthongs. The loss of the spirants 
themselves was considered under the head of Substitution. 
Thevtyek- A curious phenomenon in connection with the subject is 
MffTiKov. ^ e y l ( j >6 x /€V(7Tl/ f C ^ Vt This is in its origin no mere poetic 
license, though it may have been afterwards metrically useful. 
It seems to me to have been rather a sort of " after-sound," 
resembling the Sanskrit Anus vara, a feeble echo supplying 
the place of a lost consonant. Thus Xeyofies, which is still 
found in Doric, was doubtless the old Greek form, parallel to 
legimus : then the ? fell away, and left Xeyope : the final syl- 
lable was then thickened in pronunciation, and so became 
finally Xtyofxev ; where it is not to be supposed that v is a 
substitute for a\ but, as I said, a new "after-sound," pro- 

1 See pp. 179—185. 2 Comp. 238. 



XIL] LOSS. 259 

duced after a weak termination : which could afterwards 
(erroneously) be sounded in places where no consonant had 
been lost, as Xeyovcrtv. Schleicher (ib.) points out that the 
loss of final 9, though rare in Greek, is paralleled by outo)(<?), 
&c. 

In Latin — at least as we know it through the Roman Greater 
writers — there was no such dislike to the accumulation ofxaSm. 
consonants at the end of a word, as we have seen in Greek. 
Any number of consonants which could be pronounced was 
allowed. Thus — to borrow examples from Schleicher 1 — we 
have ferunty hunc, hiemps, arcs, urbs } &c. : all of which are 
impossible to the Greek ear. The only exceptions seem to be 
these : that no double consonant is permissible, e. g. we have 
05 and fel, but the genetives ossis and fellis : and that no 
two mutes are allowed : thus we have lac(t), compare 
<ya\a(/cT), cor(d), &c, 2 

But in the older Latin — the spoken Latin of which 
Plautus is the written representative — which, as we have so 
often seen, continued to be the language of the people, even 
when Virgil and Horace were delighting the literary circles 
of Rome with verses which must have been read in a man- 
ner widely different from the pronunciation of common life ; 
in this Latin final consonants were regularly dropped : they 
were often actually omitted upon inscriptions, not merely 
ceased to be audibly pronounced as in the Romance lan- 
guages, where they have been fixed by literature even when 
unheard in conversation. The consonants which most fre- 
quently fell away in this manner are the most common final 
letters s, m, and t. For the loss of these Schleicher gives 
the following examples. 

Final s is dropped upon inscriptions in nominative cases, Loss of 
like Tetio(s), Furio(s), Corneli(ps). The older inscriptions, 

1 Comp. 270. 2 lb. 271. 

17—2 



260 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

those of the second Punic war, shew it much less often 
written than dropped 1 : though when the o in these nomina- 
tives was weakened to u, the s seems to have been regularly 
retained. By the beginning of the Empire, s even preceded 
by u was often lost on inscriptions : and a few centuries 
later, s had vanished from every case as well as from the 
nominative. In written Latin of the classical age, as we 
know, the 5 was generally kept. Still even here there are 
plenty of instances where its loss in writing shews how little 
it was commonly heard. Such are forms like amabare by 
the side of amabaris, and similar losses in other tenses : forms 
also like mage and pote for magis and potis. And it was 
regularly dropped in other forms, only a few traces sur- 
viving in Plautus ; or in words, which from some old asso- 
ciation retained their archaic form. Thus s was regularly 
dropped in the nominative plural of the O^declension. Yet 
we find hisce homines in Plautus 2 , magistreis, publiceis, &c. on 
inscriptions. In the genetive of the A-declension, we have 
familiae, yet sometimes the older familia(£)s. And lastly, 
through previous loss of the vowel of the termination, we 
have pueros, puers, puer. 
Loss of jr or the omission of final m on inscriptions we need not 

go farther than the often-quoted epitaph of Scipio, the consul 
of A.u.c. 495. This begins, as given by Mommsen in the 
Corpus, 

Hone oino ploirume cosentiont E[omani] 

Duonoro optumo fuise uiro [uiroro — e conj. Ritschl~\. 

Luciom Scipione, &c. 

Here the m is omitted five times, and written once : whether 
written or omitted the scanning seems to be the same. There 
can be no doubt that it was not heard but continued in an 
irregular fashion to be written to prevent confusion of cases, 
&c, the reason why it was kept in later Latin. That it was 

1 Corssen, i\ 286. 2 Trin. 877, and Brix's note. 



XII.] LOSS. 261 

hardly heard is shewn by its elision in the Augustan poets, 
but that it was not absolutely dumb seems proved by its 
occurring not elided in Lucretius 1 . 

Final t, as Schleicher points out, seems to have had the Loss of 
sound of weak d. As such it was sometimes written in the 
ablative case : as Gnaiuod, sometimes dropped altogether in 
the same line 2 , as patre(d). Haut is sometimes haud, some- 
times hau. The late Latin shews the t written in personal 
terminations, as ueh.it : but the old Latin often omitted it, as 
in dede for dedit, dedro for ded(e)ront ; compare the classical 
dederunt and dedere. This loss was universal in Umbrian ; as 
it was in the late Latin, and the derived modern Italian. 
Indeed the loss of final consonants is felt much more in 
Umbrian than in Latin, but not in Oscan. Schleicher sug- 
gests reasonably enough that at the time from which our 
inscriptions date, a common form had established itself 
among the wide-spread Sabellian tribes, which became the 
literary dialect, and therefore ceased to vary further. 

1 At least in monosyllables ; see in. 1082, and Munro's note on n. 404. 

2 Epitaph of Scipio. 



LECTUEE XIII. 

CONSONANTAL CHANGE (continued). 

III. Assimilation. 

1. The Greek Aspirates. 

I have already, in the account of the Latin aspirates, given 
the reason why I believe the Greek aspirates to be the result 
of assimilation. The change of the original brearth to the 
spiritus asper seems to me to explain the changes of these 
letters in both Greek and Latin, whilst I know no other 
that does. The original pronunciation of the soft letter, 
followed by a breath, possible to the original people, possible 
to the Hindu, and to his descendant 1 , was impossible to the 
nations of the west, who therefore changed the breath to 
the more familiar and very slightly different spiritus asper. 
Even in Sanskrit this occasionally took place; e.g. in hita 
for dhita, the past participle of DHA, and the root HAN 
for GHAN; in these the breath has become the rough 

1 Thus Prof. Arendt (Kuhn and Schleicher's Beitrdge, n. 289) declares 
that he has heard a Mohammedan, whose mother speech was Urdu, pro- 
nounce these sounds countless times without the slightest insertion of a 
vowel between the soft explosive sound and the h, and without the soft being 
changed into the corresponding hard. 



Lect. XIII.] ASSIMILATION. 263 

breathing, and expelled the d and g. In Latin we have 
seen that sometimes one member of the new compound was 
left, sometimes the other. The Greek followed its usual 
course. Instead of ejecting one of the sounds — a process, 
as we have seen, rare in Greek — it allowed the second to 
assimilate the first, and, therefore, instead of gh, dh and b h, 
the soft aspirates, we have regularly the hard ^, 0, <fc. 

That the original aspirates at least passed through this Pronunda- 
stage is allowed even by those who maintain that % 6, <f> Greek aspi- 
were sounded in classical Greek not as hard aspirates, but rates ' 
as hard spirants (as they are in modern Greek) correspond- 
ing to German ch, English hard th 1 , and / respectively. This 
view is taken by Prof. Arendt 2 : the soft aspirates, according 
to him, became first the hard aspirates, and then the hard 
spirants; the immediate passage would be impossible. Cur- 
tius allows the change from the hard aspirates to the spirants, 
but does not believe that it took place until at least the 
first century of our era. As it is of some interest to know 
what was the pronunciation of these important sounds in 
the mouths of the great men of Greece, I will briefly 
examine the arguments on both sides. 

Arendt argues that the difference of sound between the Probably 
Greek aspirates (if real aspirates) and the Latin equivalents not sounded 
would be too great for languages so cognate: an argument as s P irants - 
which certainly does not convince mo. And when he adds 
that 6rjp passes into the by-form cf>rjp (like Latin fera), it is 
quite true that the difference of sound between the spirants 
th and / is less than that between the aspirates th and ph; 
but this does not prove that t'h could not pass into ph, or 
that (j>r)p and fera agree from anything more than accident. 
Arendt next examines cases where the aspirates occur in 
combination with other aspirates or consonants; and no 

1 As in this, breath, &c. 2 K. and S. Beit. 11. 424, &o. 



264 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

doubt in these cases the difficulty of the genuine aspirate 
is most felt. Words like ^air^xo indeed are as easy on one 
hypothesis as on the other: cr6 is easier, as Arendt allows, 
if 6 be an aspirate, but he calls in the English pronunciation 
to shew that 6 can be a spirant in this combination (e.g. 
in Demosthenes) ; though he seems to think that " asthma " 
and " isthmus " are pronounced in England as astma and 
istmus: surely either the spirant is heard fully, or entirely 
dropped, as asma, Ismus; and he is uncertain whether 
" sixth " is pronounced as siksth or sikth. But undoubtedly 
his strongest argument is furnished by the combinations x@ 
and (p0. It is quite impossible to sound c'Mh together fully. 
This Curtius himself grants 1 ; but he says in reply, I think 
quite truly, that in no language do we find that in groups 
of consonants each particular consonant preserves its pecu- 
liar value completely under all circumstances. Some one 
must be partly, if not wholly, sacrificed: this is the very 
reason of the loss which we saw so frequent in consonantal 
groups. So in words like %0e? and o,(\)6ltos it is conceivable 
that the breathing may have been sufficiently given by the 
second ; so that Mhes, and apt'hitos were heard. Curtius men- 
tions the form cnrOiTos as occurring on an inscription; and he 
suggests that the sound may even have been apft'hitos, by 
assimilation of the breath, thus paving the way to the 
spirants of the later Greek. 
Arguments On the other hand, Curtius adduces some positive argu- 
thajwere men ts 2 to prove ^, 0, cf> were real aspirates, which seem to 
really as P i- me on the whole satisfactory. The first of these is the ease 

rate , # J 

sounds. with which the h fell off, and left the explosive element 
alone, in reduplication, &c; e.g. Tre-fyvica, i-ri-0r]v, evOavra, 
the Ionic variant for evravOa, &c. Leo Meyer 3 well points 
out that the possibility of a reduplicated / in Latin (fefelli, 

1 Gr. Et. 373. 2 Grt Eu 370) &c . 

3 Verg. Gram. 1. 43. 



XIIL] ASSIMILATION. 265 

&c.) by the side of Trecbvica, &c, shews the difference of 
sound between / and </>; in the Greek dissimilation was 
necessary to avoid cacophony. Curtius' second argument is 
the pronunciation of these sounds by foreigners, so far as 
we can judge from Aristophanes; e.g. opvcro irapaBiBcofii, in 
the Birds (1679), or the speech of the Scythian in the 
Thesmophoriazusae : 

irep iyco '^evuy/ei iroppio^, iva irvXd^i croc. 

These may not be conclusive, but at least they shew that 
6 and <j> imperfectly pronounced were more like r and it 
than th and f. But the most convincing argument is cer- 
tainly that drawn from Latin transliteration, at the time 
when they expressed the borrowed Greek words as well as 
they could with their own alphabet. If x na0 ^ been a guttu- 
ral spirant surely the Latins would have denoted it by their 
h, which, as we have seen, had still a guttural character. 
Yet we find on inscriptions JBacanal 1 , Antioco 2 , and many 
others. Similarly w^e find p in the place of <j>, not /: 
and even though/ differed from in being a "labio-dental" 
(according to some authorities) whereas </> was a pure labial, 
yet, at least, if <£ had been a spirant, / was a nearer sound 
than p: but w 7 e have Pilipus 9 , triumpe, thrice repeated in 
the old Carmen Arvale 4 , Trupo 5 (Trypho), &c. The Latin 
has lost the dental spirant; therefore no certain influence 
can be drawn respecting 6: but, at all events, it always 
appeared as t (as in Corintus* and Cartago), not as /, the 
spirant which stands for th in Latin. This argument from 
transliteration seems to me very strong: the Latins in at 
least two cases possessed the very spirants which would have 
represented the supposed Greek spirants; and did not employ 
them. Lastly, the modern Greek in certain cases represents 

1 Corpus, n. 196. 2 Id. 11. 35. 3 Id. 11. 364. 

4 Id. n. 28. ;> Id. n. 1109. " I 'l. a. 641. 



266 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

the old aspirates by hards, not, as commonly, by spirants; 
e.g. €kco for e%ft), rewlrr}?. Now it is conceivable that 
original aspirates should produce sometimes spirants, some- 
times hards ; but difficult to conceive that original spirants 
should turn back to hards. These arguments of Curtius, 
which I have here very briefly set before you, seem to me 
as satisfactory as the case will allow of. My conclusion is 
that x, 6, and cj> were genuine hard aspirates at the prime 
of Greek literature, and that they were formed from the soft 
aspirates of the original speech by the assimilating influence 
of the spiritus asper, into which the original breathing 
passed. 



2. General rules of assimilation in Greek. 

Most of the changes of which I have here to speak are 
familiar to you from the Greek grammar. I wish to arrange 
them together for you as results of a common tendency. In 
most of them we shall find that a dental or a spirant is con- 
cerned, either as the active cause of the assimilation, the assi- 
milating letter, or the sound assimilated. It is this tendency 
to assimilation which has produced the largest amount of 
change in Greek words ; one consonant takes the place of 
another, even a consonant foreign to the original system is 
introduced. Yet it is noticeable how even here, in consonantal 
combinations, where the Greek seems to have changed so 
much more than the Latin, the Greek is in reality more truly 
conservative; it has not lost any sound without some equiva- 
lent; whereas we saw that the Latin constantly allowed a 
consonant to drop without leaving any trace whatever. The 
Greek is also the gainer in softness of sound. 
/. Com- We ma y consider Greek assimilation under two main 

plete Assi- 
milation, heads — as complete and incomplete. In the first case either 



XIII.] ASSIMILATION. 267 

one sound passes into the other, or the two pass into some 
third sound, denoted either by one symbol, as f, or by two, 
as acr, tt. In the second, one sound simply becomes more 
like the other. Under the first head we may distinguish 
the following cases. 

(i) Where the first sound is assimilated to the second. (i) Assimi- 
Such cases are (fxievvos for (paea-vo-s, a form which is the°j!rst 
regular in the Aeolic 1 , but occurs also in Tragedy. The sound - 
Attic poets may possibly have borrowed this and similar 
forms from the Aeolic dialect. But they certainly could not 
have done so if the process had not been one familiar to the 
feeling of the Athenian language. It is shewn indeed in 
forms like evvvfii for Yecr-vvfih, which are universal throughout 
Hellas. Schleicher assigns to this principle the double p in 
TTepippvros, app7)KTos, &c. for Trepi-apvros, a-Fp^/c-TO?, which 
is not improbable 2 . Cases like av\-Xejoo } avp-pico, iroacrL for 
7roB-ac (here the later Greek dropped one cr), are familiar to 
all. OTT-fjua passed into opufia in all Greek except Aeolic. 
But no doubt this result was much commonest in the Aeolic: 
as ejjL/jU for e'oyxt, afju/xe^ (also Doric) for d-afie^, e/x/xa for Fecr- 
fjua ; and (in Boeotian) lttco for terra) (as Ar. Ach. 911), 
erracrav for eaiaa-av. Still more is this so in the next case. 

(ii) Where the second sound is assimilated to the first. (»") Asrimi- 
Thus we have in Aeolic /crewco, Kpivvoi, Treppo^o^, icevvos the second 
(for /cei/-yo-9), MlWaros 3 , efioXkopbav*: we have 6Wa 5 instead sound - 
of tfifia, and oaa-o/jtac for oTr-rofiai: see however the end 
of the next case. Numerous other examples may be found 
in Ahrens 6 . 

The forms eaaofiai, ottls, ottttoto 7 are of course not 
Aeolic only (as far as the reduplication of the consonant 
goes), but also Ionic. I may add with respect to the last 

1 e.g. Sappho, in. 2. 2 Comp. 227. 

3 Theok. xxviii. 21. 4 Id. 1. 15. 5 Sappho, 11. 11. 

6 Gr. Dial. 1. 49—69. 7 Sappho, 11. 2; 111. :>. 



cation of 
both 
sounds : 
where the 



268 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

that the itit is only found in pronominal words, in which the 
first it is not original: the old form of irora (whence o-irore) 
was Kora, then a parasitic u sprang up after k, and produced 
in turn o-kFoto;, 6-ir^ora, and o-nnroTa. But I do not think 
that 7T7T is found in any case where it is radical 1 . The forms 
ecrreKka, &c. for eareX-cra, Tecrcrape? for rerfapes, 7roA.Xo? for 
7ro\-Fo-5 (whence the other form 77-0X1/(0)5), oXXvpa for okvv^i, 
irrlaaw for Trna-yw, are of course Attic. Many more exam- 
ples are given by Schleicher 2 . 

(Hi) Modifi- (iii) Where the two sounds pass into a third (doubled) 
sound. 

Here we have the numerous and important cases where 

first is a we find <t<t (tt) produced by the combination of y with 

hardguttu- . 

ral or den- a mute. If we begin with the dentals where the nature of 
the change is most obvious, we find ry passing into ao~ (tt) 
in Kpeaacov for KpeT-ywv (icpaT-os, &c), Xlaaofxat for \iT-yo- 
ixai (\ct-w, &c), and similarly 6y becomes acr (tt) in Kopvaaco 
for KopvO-yco, in yiteo-0-05 for fjueO-yo-s. In all these and simi- 
lar cases we find both the era and tt forms. What is the 
history of these two forms? Which is the older of the 
two? Or is there some intermediate step through which 
they both come, but neither of them is derived from the 
other? 

Pott holds tt to be the oldest in the case of the verbs; 
where he thinks that to is the suffix, not yo. Thus he 

1 Consequently we must reject the emendation vir' d-rnraXw in Theok. 
xxvii. 4, 

ottttvl KvTTpidos tpov Ka\d/jLU) x^P 0V fvircLirdXuT, 

where the last word is corrupt. I like Ahrens' emendation /<a\a / uy...u7ra(r- 
crdXip best of any that have been offered. Mr Snow however in his recent 
edition of Theokritus has carried out very ingeniously Meineke's suggestion 
that some proper name has been lost in the MS. word, by producing from 
Strabo the name "AfnreXos for a promontory of Samos. Still viraaadXcp is 
nearer to the MS. and so unusual a word was more likely to be corrupted 
than the common "A^7reXos. 

2 Comp. 228. 



XIII.] ASSIMILATION. 269 

would make the order, TrpaK-ro-, irpdrra), irpaa-aay, by regular 
weakenings. This however leaves the comparatives still 
unexplained. And further, the Doric, which elsewhere does 
not weaken t to g, has yet irpacraco, Oakacraa, &c; so that 
these forms would be unexplained. The first appearance of 
tt is in the Attic, and in Boeotian (which also shews 88). 
In the Tempora und Modi Curtius seemed to explain the 
phenomenon as a Boeotism which had crept into Attica, in 
the first instance in order to avoid assibilation in words like 
cr<pdo-crcD, and then passed over the whole language. This 
explanation, improbable on many grounds, he has since, 
I think, dropped. 

Two other explanations seem to be possible. The first is 
that tt was produced from ry, as Xltto/jLclc, rirrape^: but 
that the y could also assibilate the t (just as 1 or v could, as 
we shall shortly see); and thus came also \iG-yo-yuai and 
\iGGopLai, like eaao/jLat for ea-yo-p^ai. This seems exceed- 
ingly natural and probable : but here again we are met by 
the fact that the Dorians have the double g, and yet do not 
exhibit gl for ta, the analogy on which this reasoning rests. 
Consequently I think we are driven to the second explana- 
tion, to which Curtius and Schleicher incline 1 ; namely, that 
from the influence of the preceding dental, y weakened itself 
into the weak dental sibilant (denoted by us sometimes as z y 
sometimes by s, in the verb "to rise"). Thus \tr-yo-fiat 
became Xcr-Go-jxai, and Xltgo/jluo became either by case (ii) 
Xirro/xai, or by case (i) \iGGo\xai. The same explanation 
applies to final vr, followed by y, as yapievT-ya, whence 
^apleGGa, iraGa for iravr-ya, &c. In favour of this view is 
the fact that the Boeotians in other cases hardened g to t, 
as Ittw, &c. mentioned above. These words are not ex- 
plained by the first hypothesis. 

1 See also Corssen, Krit. Beitr. 168. 



270 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

The two explanations will be best seen thus, side by- 
side : 

(1) (2) 




tt av to- or rz 



(T<T TT <T(T 

Next there are numerous words in which aa (tt) arises 
from a guttural with y as well as from a dental. Thus icy 
becomes aa in iTTrjaaco (root IITAK), in rjaacov (superlative 
r)KiGT(L) : %y ^ s a ^ so a<T m ^W cra) (noun /5^x-?) and eXaaacov 
from iXaxus- In these no doubt the guttural was turned 
first of all into a dental by the y; which dental then 
in its turn assibilated the y, just as it did above. The 
change from r/K-ycov to ^T-ycov is just parallel to that which 
we shall have to notice in the Latin ; by which e. g. con-dic-io 
passed into conditio, because there was no appreciable dif- 
ference in the sound. 

This result aa (tt) seems to be confined to the combina- 
tion of the hard gutturals and dentals with y. This is worth 
observing, because in several cases it might seem as though 
the aa was formed from 7?/ or By; e.g. irpaaaco, ir\r)aa<0, 
fipdaacov, &c. But of these, the verbs are really derived from 
an older form, which contains the hard letter. Thus the 
root IIPAK seems to be guaranteed by the Lith. perk-u and 
the anra^ Xeyo/ievov, irpaicos 1 . Similarly IIAAK is the root 
of ifXat; and ttXcucovs, as well as the Lith. plaku, "I strike 2 ." 
Lastly, fipdaaoov is probably the comparative of (Bpayvs, not 
of /3paSu'?, to which it is commonly assigned 3 . Other appa- 
rent exceptions admit of similar explanations. 

rAerew no j have said that aa results only from icy fay) or Ty (6y). 

of a labial. This statement is not disproved by the forms jreaaco, iinaaoo, 

1 Gr. Et. 602. 2 Id. 250. 3 Id. 600. 



XIII.] ASSIMILATIOX. 271 

and some others. The first, ireacrco, undoubtedly seems to 
be from Treir in ireir^v, &c. But an older form is II AK ; 
and a still older (as far as regards the consonants) is found 
in the Latin COG. Similarly ivlaaco seems to belong to the 
Homeric evnrr), rjVLiraire, &c; yet the simpler form is IK, 
found in Latin in the past participle ic-tus; so that ivcirr) 
is a "word thrown," like iafi/3o$, where tcnr-ruis equally paral- 
leled by the older Latin form iac-io. Similarly oacra is not 
from R7r but the older YAK; and oaae, "the eyes," is from 
OK, found in the okkos of Hesychius and the Latin oculus. 

(iv) Where the two sounds coalesce into one single letter. Change of 

This happens when y is preceded by the soft momentary guttural or 
sounds, B and 7. Thus % = ? in e&puai, from 8ED, in ^a) dentaL 
from OD, in rpaire^a from (reJTpa-TreB-ya, in Zet>? from 
Ayevs (Sanskrit Dydus). These examples, with others, are 
given by Schleicher 1 : they are so numerous that any one 
may supply them for himself. They shew the origin of the 
Greek £ a compound letter, denoting first By, then Bs, where 
s is the weak sibilant (z) just as in the last case. Hence 
the compound letter for dz has the power of lengthening 
a previous vowel in prosody, which power it could not have 
had if it had been only a weak s or z. 

Just as Ky passed first into ry, so yy passed into By, and 
then into f, as though the dental had been original. Thus 
aTvy-yco became gtl^w, /xey-ycov became yue£W in Ionic, the 
Attic fjuel^wv, from the desire to compensate for the loss of 
the original spirant. 

It has been already mentioned that in the Boeotian the 
y assimilates itself immediately to B, and produces e.g. 
(ppaBBco from (ppaB-yco, not </>pd£<o*. At the beginning of 
a word one B suffices, as Aet? for Zefc* 

1 Comp. 231, see Gr. Et. 542, &c. 

2 e.g. depiddev for depi^eiu, Ar. Ach. 947. This is also Laconian. Sto 
Lye. 82, 94, &c. 

3 As in Ach. 911. 



272 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

77. Incom- We may now pass to incomplete assimilation — when the 
milatioT' two soun d s d° D °t become identical, but only approximate to 
each other. The principle of course is the same as that 
which we have seen acting above; only it is not so fully 
carried out. In this class we have the following main 
heads. 
(?) "Eu- (i) All the euphonic changes of grammar : by which the 

changes. ^ na ^ nar( ^ letter of a root is changed to a soft one before 
a hard termination, as &6y~fia from AOK, ypd/3Sr)v from 
TPA<I> : and vice versa a soft passes into a hard, as \6ktos, 
XexOrjvai, from AEI\ These have been already alluded to, 
and are too well known to need further description. 
(it) Changes (ii) Momentary sounds are sometimes nasalised before 
Tctsals. nasals, as cre//,-i>o? from 2EB : yet we have vtt-vos from 
SFAI1 1 . Before jjl dentals have a strong tendency to pass 
into their spirant a, as irela-fxa, oa/xr), Lcr/mev; yet oS/xr} is 
found in Attic (Aesch. Prom. 115) and iS/buev is Doric and old 
Ionic. A nasal could oha,nge the class of a momentary sound, 
in Svocjxx; for yvocpos, where the y is probably itself weakened 
from k\ compare Kvecpa?. Similarly ahvos was Cretan for 
ayvos, whence the name ''Api-dhvrj. That y ever passed into 
8 without some assimilating influence is improbable. There- 
fore ov Aav 2 is probably = ov Zfjva (i.e. A(y)ava) as Ahrens 
explains it 3 : and At^tJt??/? is either AiFcl/jltjttip or Dydvd- 
mdter* ; she is never called Trjfirjnjp. In order that yd 
should have passed into ha, a parasitic y must have sprung 
up after y : which is improbable because it had F (y) after it, 
as shewn in yvr), i.e. y?a~a, and ala for fata or yfala 5 . 
(ih) Chan. (iii) Nasals are affected in their turn by the following 
nasals. consonant : we have avy-icaXew, and dyyeWco (ava) ; e/ATreLpos 

and i/uLpaiva). 
(iv) Change (iv) In all dialects except the Doric t passes into o~ 

of t to a. 

1 Comp. 230. 2 Theok. iv. 17 ; vn. 39. 3 Gr. Dial. n. 80. 

4 According to Max Mi'Jler, n. 57. 5 Gr. Et. 162. 



XIIL] ASSIMILATION. 273 

before i\ as tyqaiior farl. This might rather seem a case 
of simple substitution : but I believe that it first occurred in 
cases where another vowel followed, as ttXovgios for ttXovt- 
2/0-?, TrXrjaios for 7rXaT-yo-<s : when the change would be due 
to the assibilating influence of the y : then the softer sound 
was preferred universally ; this a for r is also found before v 
in ay, but in Doric rv is kept : the old form was tva, where 
again the semi-vowel could assibilate ; and the same is pro- 
bably true of the suffix -0-^77 for -tvvt), Latin -tuna; for there 
is a Vedic form -tvana 1 . 

(v) I may mention here the peculiar Laconian weaken- (v) Laconi- 
ing of 6 to <t, which may have begun in the same way as the ^q 1 ™^ 
last change, according to my suggestion. Thus we have vol 
tco a loo in Aristophanes 2 , and many other similar forms : cra- 
Xaaao/jiiScov occurs in Alkman 3 . The form aios for #eo? is also 
Boeotian 4 . It will be evident how near these two varieties, 
the Boeotian of the Aeolic, and the Laconian of the Doric, 
approach each other. 

(vi) The spirant v is altered by assimilation in certain (vi) changes 
dialects. Thus FpoSov becomes fipoSov in Sappho 6 , Ppd/cos is 
fipdicos*, and others occur. This change is less surprising, 
for we have seen that F passed into fi in Laconian even with- 
out any neighbouring sound to influence it 7 . 

In the word a$e .we seem to have a hardening of original 
v to </>. The old form is sva, which in Greek generally 
became e (through Fe). In this case it is hard to believe that 
(/> was much more than a spirant. The same change is seen 
in acfxo, the dual from tva (whence sva and crv) : compare the 
Latin uo-s, where the t has fallen off 8 . 

(vii) Lastly come some very peculiar forms which seem (vii) Other 

to be more probably due to assimilation than any other f orms . 

1 Comp. 459. - At. Lys. 86, &c. 

3 Ahrens, 11. 66. 4 Ar. Ach. 906. 

6 Frag. 69, 2. 6 Theok. xxvm. 11, see Ahrens, 1. 34. 

7 See p. 234. 8 Gr. Et. 531. 

P. L. 18 



274 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

cause. These are e.g. tttoXis by the side of 7roXt?, wroXeiios, 
&c: KTeivw by kcllvg), &c. It seems impossible to separate 
7roXt? from Sanskrit ^mra (also a "city") and Latin ple-bs, 
perhaps po-pul-us (a reduplicated form) ; and therefore it 
must be from the root PAR " to fill," which in Greek appears 
generally as IIAA or HAE, in Latin as PLE. This evi- 
dence excludes any possibility of t having originally belonged 
to the root and then fallen out. It is clearly a Greek 
insertion. The only explanation of this curious change 
which I know, does not seem quite satisfactory. It is given 
by Professor Kuhn 1 and adopted by Curtius : that y through 
indistinct articulation sprang up after it, and assimilated 
by the it to r. We have seen above that iry never became 
<r<7, as the other hards did ; but it is not easy to see why, if 
the sound iry were difficult, it should not have passed into 
7T6 or tti, instead of the very difficult ttt. We mast remem- 
ber however that what is difficult to us was not necessarily 
difficult to a Greek — as the aspirates, for example. The 
explanation is supported by the form %#e?. Here again the 
dental seems to belong to the Greek only : the Sanskrit form 
is hyas for ghyas, Lat. heri : and here the Sanskrit gives the 
necessary y : ^6wv, according to Curtius 2 is another case in 
point : the older form is preserved in ^ajma-l, with which com- 
pare ^OajxaXo^; ; and the Latin humus agrees. Here however 
a different parasitic sound in Sanskrit has produced kshamd 
in that language. 

Perhaps this explanation of those intrusive letters may 
stand till a better can be suggested. They are certainly not 
"euphonic" or "strengthened forms:" why did 7r6\t? re- 
quire to be strengthened ? Still less are they " metrical 
licenses :" why should a Greek poet have the liberty of arbi- 
trarily inserting an entirely new letter in order to make 
a word suit his verse any more than an English writer ? 
1 Zeitsch. xi. 310, see Gr. Et. 437. 2 Gr. EL 438. 



XIII.] ASSIMILATION. 275 



3. General rules of Assimilation in Latin. 



In Latin also we have complete and incomplete assimila- I. Complete 

Assin 
Hon. 



tion. Complete assimilation may be divided into the same 



heads as those which we considered in the Greek. 

(i) Where the first letter assimilated itself to the second, (i) Assimi- 
Thus sup-mus becomes summus, sed-la is sella ; d is assi- ^^jf 
milated very frequently, as in lapillus for lapid(u)lus, esse for letter - 
ed-se: t passes through s in pet-na, pesna, penna ; compare 
ces-na, cena : g has been assimilated in flamma [flag-ma) : 
very likely, as Schleicher suggests, serra is for sec-ra 1 . In all 
these cases the radical vowel was short : therefore the final 
consonant was not absolutely forced out, but assimilated : and 
was written after the time when it became customary to write 
double consonants, not merely to make a little mark above 
one of them (the ' Sicelicus'). When the vowel was long the 
consonant was entirely lost, e.g. in sua(d)-uis, and other cases 
already mentioned among examples of Loss. 

(ii) Where the second letter assimilates itself to the first, (ii) Assimi- 
This change happens to t in superlatives after s or r : as * c l ™ d °* 
durissumus for dur-i(o)s-tumus, celerrimus perhaps for celer-is- letter - 
tumus, celerstumus, celersimus' 2 ; and numerous others. After 
r, s naturally passes into r, Sisferrem for fer-sem, torreo for 
torseo : and analogously after I passes into I, in uellem for 
uel-sem ; v also assimilates itself to I, in mollis for mol(d)uis 
(Sanskrit, mridus), sollus for sol-uos; compare the phonetically 
different sal-uos ; the cause being doubtless the strong sound 
of I at the end of a syllable. 

(iii) Where the two letters pass into another double (iii ) Modl . 
sound. £ c f on °i 

bothsounds. 

1 Comp. 258, whence these examples are taken. 2 Comp. '2Cr2,. 

18—2 



276 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

This takes place with some past participles in -tus and 
derivatives in -tor ; where the t of the suffix together with 
the final letter of the root passes into ss. When the root itself 
ends in s, no such change commonly takes place, as us-tus, 
haus-tus, &c. But it occurs regularly when the root ends 
with a dental : e.g. fissus for fid-tus, cassus for cad-tus, passus 
for pat-tus, and many others : sometimes the first s vanishes, 
as in ui-sus, lae-sus, &c. : sometimes the double s is preserved 
in old Latin, as ussus, diuis-sus. In these cases the explana- 
tion seems pretty certain : the s at the end of the root is due 
to Dissimilation, as we shall soon see : then fistus assimi- 
lated itself to fissus, as we saw above in (ii). The same 
change is found in pressus from premo (through prensiis), and 
passus for pan-sus. 
II. Incom- Passing next to incomplete assimilation we find the first 

plete assi- . ^ 1 

milation. two cases as in Greek. 

(i) "Eu' (i) The "euphonic changes," by which a hard passes into 

Changes. a s °ft before a soft ; as in segmentum from SEC : and a soft 
into a hard, as actor from A G. 

(ii) Changes (ii) Momentary sounds passed into nasals, as Samniam 

nasals. V f° r Sab(i)nium } som-nus for sop-nus 1 . 

(i\i) Change (iii) We saw just above that fid-tus passed into fis-tus, 
° s ' and then fis-tus into fis-sus by assimilation. To assimilation 
also would seem to be due the change of t in -tus and -tor 
when in contact with other final letters than s. These are 
the somewhat cognate r and I. The change however is only 
sporadic. The t maintains itself in a?'-tus, exper-tus, and 
many others, but suffers change in cursor and cur-sus. 
Similarly in combination with final I, t still appears in altus, 
cidtus, &c. : but 5 appears in falsus, celsus, pulsus, and a few 
more. These cases may fairly be explained as the result of 
imperfect assimilation : the s is more easy to sound with r or 

1 Comp. 264. 



XIII.] ASSIMILATION. 277 

I than t is. But this explanation will hardly suffice for the 
few cases where s is found, though the root ends with a 
momentary sound. Such are lapsus, lixus, fixus, fluxus, and 
a few more. For these I think we must adopt Corssen's 
explanation 1 : that the assimilation began with those roots 
which ended in dentals : and that the new suffixes -sus and 
-sor came by degrees to be introduced through analogy into 
places where they were etymologically inadmissible. The 
tendency to soften t to s, which we have already seen is 
pretty strong in Greek, was also shewn as Corssen points 
out by the change from the older forms, pul-tare, mertare, 
mantare, &c. to pulsare, mersare, mansum, &c. 2 

The assibilation of c and t in ci and ti, when followed by AssiUla- 

tion of 
and t was 
a late 
change. 



another vowel is commonly assumed to have taken place in ^ °, c 
old Latin, as it undoubtedly did in the late Latin and the a , late 



Italian. One part of the evidence for this change is the 
varying spelling even in good MSS. of words like suspicio 
and suspitio. The sound of the two must have been very 
similar before such a change could take place ; probably 
much the same as in our " suspicion," which could be equally 
well written "suspition" as far as the sound is concerned. 
The interchange would therefore be precisely analogous to that 
between aa and tt, which we saw took place tolerably early 
in Greek. Corssen, however, who has gone most thoroughly 
into the question 3 , proves that there is no such wavering of 
spelling in the inscriptions — our best guide — till a much 
later period than is commonly supposed. Thus he says that 
there is no variety on the most trustworthy inscriptions down 
to the latest times of the Empire in the following words : 
contio, nuntius, setius, otium, indutiae, fetialis, dicio, conditio, 
solarium, patricius, tribv/nicius; both forms occur in proper 
names, like Lartius or Larcius, where a double derivation is 

1 Krit. Beitr. 426. 2 See Quint. 1. 4. 14. 3 i 2 . 49—67. 



278 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. 

quite possible : so that the complete confusion of the two 
spellings did not take place till the seventh century after 
Christ, though isolated instances doubtless occur much 
earlier. The best MSS. read suspicio and suspitio, conuicium 
and conuitium ; the first in each case is probably right ety- 
mologically. There is sufficient evidence of the assibilation 
of ci and ti among the provincials, which gave rise to the 
confusion. Ci was sounded as gi and even si in Umbrian, 
e. g. faciat was fagia, at least as early as the third century 
B. c. ; the Umbrian had even a special symbol for this palatal 
sound : and fasia is Yolscian. But for Latin there seems to 
be no evidence of the change of ci, any more than of the in- 
terchange of ci and ti, till the seventh century : while against 
the change there is the negative evidence of transliteration, 
e.g. ovvKia (in the sixth century after Christ), and the Gothic 
faskja and laiktio for fascia and lectio. The change of ti to 
si seems to have been earlier and more general : but Corssen 
regards it as belonging especially to the vulgar Latin (and 
the other Italian dialects), and not established in the speech 
of educated Rome till the fourth or fifth century after Christ. 
It is traceable however in isolated cases much earlier. Such 
are e.g. uiciens, which has come regularly through uicesiens 
and uicensiens from uicentiens : similarly amasius and others 
with the termination -asio are most probably from old -antio-: 
Acherunsius is certainly from Acherunt-w-s, Hcrtensias was 
in old Latin Hortentius 1 : and numerous names of towns in 
-esio throughout Italy, as Valesium, Falesii (Latin Falerii), 
compared with others in -ento, as Laurentum, Valentium; and 
in -usio, as Canusium, Brundusium compared with Acherun- 
tium, coincide with the other evidence for this change in all 
the Italian dialects, but seem to indicate that it occurred 
very slightly in Latin. I infer therefore that in classical Latin 

1 Krlt. Beipr. 467, &e. 



XIII] DISSIMILATION. 279 

ci and ti were both sounded hard except in cases where an- 
other form in si actually occurs beside the latter. Before e 
or i alone there can be no question that c was sounded hard. 



IV. Dissimilation. 

This principle has a more limited application to the con- 
sonants than even to the vowels, and for the same reason : 
there are not many cases in which the occurrence of the 
same sound twice is unpleasant to the ear. Still, few as 
they are, they are tolerably certain. 

(i) One case where Dissimilation acts is common to (i) Change 
Greek and Latin : namely, when a dental comes into contact 
with another dental at the beginning of a suffix. In this 
case the final dental of the root passes into s. In Greek 
the following examples may be given : clvvt-tos becomes 
dvvaros : dh-reov becomes dareov : iri6-T0<$ becomes tugtcs. 
Similarly in Latin, equit-ter(o) passes into equester: edti be- 
comes est: claud-trwm is claustrum. 

(ii) In Greek, when two aspirates occur too closely, one pi) Loss of 
is softened : i-Ov-drjv becomes irvd^v ; dc-diyfu passes into ^7^? 
TiOrjfii. So also the suffix -6c of the imperative (Indo-Euro- 
pean dhi) which is found e. g. in k\v6c, is changed to t 
when another aspirate precedes, as acodrjrc. Similarly when 
two aspirates occur in the root, one is dropped in conjuga- 
tion, as from ©T<£ we have the two forms rv(p-co and 
0v7r-aco. The existence of these doubly aspirated roots has 
been proved by Grassmann in his article already often 
referred to in the twelfth volume of the Zeitschrift 1 . 

To Dissimilation is also due the loss of the consonant in and of 
the reduplicated syllable of many verbs which begin with duplicated 
two consonants, as efcrova for tee-Krov-a, eyvwfca for ye- consonant. 

1 See Gr. Et. 49. 



280 CONSONANTAL CHANGE. [Lect. XIII. 

yvco-Ka. Perhaps too the first consonant may have some- 
times fallen away even in simple nouns for the same reason : 
as in okvos for kok-vos, compared with Latin cunc-tor, and 
Sanskrit QANK. But this must rest uncertain 1 , 
(iii) Latin (iii) The only further example in Latin — which is not 
-aUs. equally sensitive with the Greek in this respect— is the 

curious change in the termination -aris or alis, accordingly 
as I is found or r in the preceding syllable. Thus we have 
uolg-aris, popul-aris, &c. : but mort-alis r later-alis. Similarly 
the form Pari-lia sprang up beside the more difficult 
Pali-lia*. 

1 See Gr. Et. 638.- * Corssen, i. 80 ; Comp. 267. 



LECTURE XIV. 



INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. 



I HAVE now set before you at some length the changes changes 
arising in Greek and Latin from a weak articulation. For llu^tof 
example, we have seen how sirnply through lack of energy clearness in 

. pronuncia- 

a hard letter could be displaced by a soft, that is, a stronger Hon. 
by a weaker sound. This is the simplest instance of abso- 
lute weakening. Sometimes, again, we saw that a stronger 
took the place of a weaker sound, when that sound formed 
part of a compound which could be pronounced more easily 
after such change: here, therefore, also there was weaken- 
ing; a strong contrast of sounds was done away with. In 
a word, the new sound or new compound was always an 
absolutely easier sound to pronounce. 

I wish now briefly to consider a different kind of change, 
caused by what I call indistinct articulation. It is possible 
to alter a language in another way than by merely substi- 
tuting an easier for a more difficult sound; in which case 
the new sound, weaker though it be, is clearly heard. It is 
possible to pronounce a word through laziness without suffi- 
cient sharpness to give each letter its full and proper sound. 
In this case no other recognised letter is at first heard; but 
an indefinite amount of indistinct sound is produced after 



2.82 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

the letter thus slurred; which in time, if this relaxed pro- 
nunciation become common, often takes the form of the 
nearest sound in the existing alphabet. Thus two letters 
grow out of one; and a word is often actually increased; 
and it is not at all necessary that the new form should be 
really easier to pronounce than the old one. The old saying 
is here justified, that lazy people give themselves most 
trouble. For it is, I think, unquestionably the desire to 
save labour — to avoid the exertion required to pronounce 
clearly and distinctly a difficult sound — which produced this 
change, just as much as it produced substitution and assi- 
milation, as we have already seen. Both kinds of change 
are due to that one and the same principle which causes all 
phonetic change. 

This kind of change is familiar enough to us in daily 
life. It is heard when instead of "Ah!" which is really 
simply long a (sounded naturally), the vowel is heard follow- 
ed by an indistinct sound, as though it were written "aw!" 
In producing the latter combination it is not necessary to 
open the lips so fully, nor to expel the breath so strongly; so 
there is a saving of muscular exertion : on the other hand, the 
sound is prolonged to an extent which at least neutralises 
the economy of expenditure. Similarly when a man, instead 
of saying "fellow" (in which the last syllable really ends with 
6) says " fellah," besides giving a stronger vowel he actually 
sounds that breath at the end of the word which we find 
somewhat difficult when we try to sound it in Indian words 
like " Rajah." And yet the additional sound is certainly the 
result of laziness. I have given a few other examples from 
our own language in my first lecture 1 , when I was briefly 
mentioning this cause of phonetic change. I now proceed 
to give some of its more remarkable operations in Greek 
and Latin. It affects most (as we should naturally expect) 

1 At p. 12. 



XIV.] LABIALISM. 283 

the strongest sounds, as the gutturals; or combination of 
sound, as e.g. sum-sit, causing the insertion of a non-original 
p; or, lastly, such sounds as were especially difficult to 
a particular people, as the spirants to the Greeks. I take 
first the passage of the gutturals in both Greek and Latin 
into the labials or the dentals. 



1. Labialism. 

This name has been given (first, so far as I know, by Change of 
Professor Curtius) to the change from K to it and p\ ^ Q ^ t07rand 
believes the change to have been produced through the 
influence of a parasitic u or w (v): k is the hardest of all 
consonants, as he says, to pronounce, and requires the most 
distinct articulation to keep the sound pure from subsidiary 
breaths. If we pronounce it lazily without fully opening 
the mouth, the result is that together with it a slight 
w-sound is quite unconsciously pronounced, because the lips 
are nearly in the requisite position for producing a labial : 
we get after the & a "labial after-sound" (" halbvocalischer 
labialer Nachklang," as Corssen calls it 2 ). Other imperfect 
placing of the organs leads to other similar sounds, as y, 
whence arises Dentalism, which we shall next consider. 

In order to make this clear, two points must be proved : Possibility 
first, that v (w) following after k could change it to p : next, change. 
that the v is really almost always adventitious, and not part 
of an original Graeco-Italian or Indo-European compound. 
The first must be proved by the exceptions to the second 
statement. The change does occur in a few cases where the v 
is probably Indo-European: thus the possibility of it is proved. 
On the other hand, it will, I think, be made clear by several 

1 See Gr. Et. pp. 399—420. 2 i 2 . 76. 



284 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

examples, taken from within the Latin itself, that this kv 
(or qu) was commonly later than k. 

As the first example of original kv we may take the often 
quoted akva, "a horse." Here the va is the termination: 
the noun is formed from AK, and the horse is conceived of 
as "the swift." The v is found in the Sanskrit agva, the 
Lithuanian aszva, the old Saxon ehu\ By the side of these 
and the Latin equ-os we cannot doubt that Xttttos stands for 
6/c-Fo-?; especially as the assimilated form '//c/eo? is preserved 
in the Etym. Mag. 2 : the i has sunk from the Graeco-Italian 
e. Here the original kv has passed into irir in Greek. 
Rather oddly the same original form must be assumed for 
the cognate words in many lauguages denoting water; Latin 
aqua, Gothic ahva, and Sanskrit ap or dpas, the nominative 
plural, which alone occurs in classical literature: the word 
does not seem to occur in any simple Greek form; but Cur- 
tius conjectures, with great probability, that it occurs in the 
name Meora-aTT-coo 3 , the dwellers between the two waters, on 
the analogy of Mecro-irora/ubLa, MeO-vS-ptov, Inter-amna, &c. 
Even the interrogative pronoun must apparently be added 
to this list, as having, at least, a secondary form — kva as well 
as ka — before the separation: whence come qui, the Gothic 
hva, the Sanskrit ku-tas, "whence," &c, and, consequently, 
the Greek iro in iro-6ev, 7ro£o? (77-0-3/0-9), &c: but that the 
simpler form ka still survived is shewn by its use in 
Sanskrit and Lithuanian, by the middle Ionic KoOev and 
/coios, and by the fact that it was corrupted in a different 
way to Greek tl<s and re, which can come from ka but riot 
from kva. Lastly, the Latin qui-es, Gothic hvi-la, would 
seem also to shew a second form kvi by the side of ki, whence 
KeijbLcu 4 : this is negative evidence; as the Greek never took 
the secondary form, naturally enough from its dislike of 

1 Gr. Et. 405. 2 lb. 3 j &> 412 . 

4 Krit. Beitr. 50. 



XIV.] LABIALISH. 285 

spirants, it has never developed a form spelt with ir. Suffi- 
cient examples have been given, I think, to shew that lev 
when original could pass into a labial; and Grassmann 
assumes in every case such a compound for the origin of the 
change 1 . But these are nearly all the certain examples 
which can be given of the compound sound occurring in 
several Indo-European languages; and though useful as esta- 
blishing the possibility of the transition, they are certainly 
by far too few to prove that the labial always results from 
an original Indo-European kv. 

Next we have to shew that the v in other cases sprang Caused ly 
merely from phonetic causes, and was not a suffix. This pai asi lc 
will be sufficiently clear from the cases where kv(qu) is found 
in Latin as well as k(c), compared with the corresponding 
words in the Greek. Thus we have sequ-or by sec-undus, 
coqu-o by coc-us, linqu-o by lic-et 2 , torqu-eo by torc-ulum, and 
many others. And corresponding to all these we find ir in 
Greek, as eir-ofiai, irkir-wv, e-Xtnr-ov, and rpeTr-co. If we were 
left to the Latin we might have supposed that the u was 
added to strengthen the present stem ; but this explanation 
will clearly not suit the Greek. We must conclude that the 
v is parasitic and belongs to the Graeco-Italian time; was 
retained by the Latin, and indeed often introduced into 
words which do not exhibit it in the Greek; but in Greek 
the kv regularly passed on to w, because the Greeks liked 
distinct pronunciation, and disliked " irrational " sounds, of 
which we saw so much in the Latin in an earlier lecture. 
That the Greek it is really the equivalent of Latin qu cannot 
be doubted even from the examples I have given: there are 
more in which neither language has kept the original k, as 
TrifjLTre (Aeolic) and quinque. In other cases the Latin has 
kept the simple form, whilst the Greek shews the weaker; 

1 So also Leo Meyer, 1. 29—31. 2 Gr. Et. 40G. 



286 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

such are uoc-o by Fe7r-o9, oc-ulus by oir-Toybai ; compare SEII 
in eanrere vvv jjloi, Movo-ai, with SEC in Livius 1 translation 
of the first line of the Odyssey, " Yirum mihi, Camena, insece 
uersutum 1 ." These changes cannot be called peculiar to 
any dialect in Greek; they are quite sporadic, occurring to 
some extent in all. But in Italy the line is pretty sharply 
drawn; whilst the Latin has only qu or the original c(k), the 
other Italian dialects often only have p. Thus pid is Oscan 
for quid; pumpe is Umbrian for quomque: "four" is petora 
in Oscan, petur in Umbrian ; pomtis or pomptis is " five " in 
Oscan: and it is interesting to see the provincial names 
formed from these numerals, as Petronius and Petreius cor- 
responding to the Latin Quartus, Pontius and Pompeius to 
Quintus : petorritum too seems to be simply a "four-wheeler 2 ." 
It is probable that Epona may be a Sabellian form of the 
horse-deity: also that palumbes, popina, are Sabellian in 
their origin, the Latin forms being coluwba and coquina; 
and I would suggest the same explanation of lupus, com- 
pared with \ua:o? and Sanskrit vrika; the wolf was not 
likely to be so formidable in the plain of Latium as in the 
central highlands, so that the Latin form may have fallen 
into disuse and been superseded by the Sabellian. Curtius 3 
allows here an exception from his ordinary stringent rule 
that both sound and sense must agree when we attempt to 
identify words in different languages. Schleicher with great 
consistency denies the connection, and betakes himself to 
the Zend u-rup-is 4 , and derives both from RUP (LTJP), to 
cut, which seems to me an infinitely improbable conjunction. 
At all events p for h was extremely rare, if not wholly 
unknown, in Latin. 

1 Compare also Plant. Miles G. 1220 ; cum ipso pol sum secuta : which 
is altered by Fleckeisen to locuta. 

2 Mommsen, Unterit. Dial. p. 287—289. 3 Gr. Et. 76. 

4 To which Lupus "wol one Zweifel gehort," (Comp. 241). Schleicher's 



XIV.] LABIALISM. 287 

The symbol Q is nothing but the Greek Q, and was re- History of 
ceived with the rest of the Doric alphabet from Oumae. So ^ 
Quintilian speaks of Koppa as "similis effectu specieque, 
nisi quod paulum a nostris obliquatur 1 ." In the same pas- 
sage, however, it is spoken of as redundant ; the reason is that 
U was commonly written after it in Latin to denote the 
labial after-sound; and therefore practically Q denoted no 
more than K. But in old Latin the TJ was omitted, at least 
when another U followed : thus we find pequnia in the Ban- 
tine Law 2 , and other inscriptions of the same age, Mirqurios 3 , 
oquoltod (i.e. occulto), &c. ; and Corssen points out 4 that this 
practice was even extended under the Empire, as shewn by 
these forms found on inscriptions^ qis, qaerella, neqidem, &c. : 
but this probably was only a caprice of grammarians who 
wished to give the symbol some special use, and never became 
general. I have already mentioned 5 that when after qu 
passed in the regular course of weakening into u, qu was 
again written as c, in order to avoid the uu, as cum, locun- 
tur, ecus, &c. When the Italians, who did not possess the 
symbol, borrowed a Latin word in which it occurred, they 
transliterated it by Jcv; thus kvaisstur is Oscan for quaestor: 
the Greeks denoted it by kov, as ~Koviptvos, by ko as KotWo?, 
but by kv regularly as Taptcvvios 6 . The Latin grammarians 
seem to have perfectly understood the nature of the symbol 
QU, when they decided that the U was neither a consonant 
nor a vowel: it was not a consonant, because in that case 
the e in equites must have been long; it was not a vowel 
for that would have lengthened the second syllable by crasis 
with i. In other words the TJ was merely a symbol, ex- 
pressing further and somewhat unnecessarily the indistinct 

mode of writing German corresponds to his subject ; it is phonetic, and at 
first remarkably puzzling. 

1 1. iv. 9. 2 Mommsen, Corpus, no. 197, p. 45. 

3 lb. no. 59. 4 i 2 . 72. 

6 See p. 188. 6 Corssen, i 2 . 74. 



288 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

after-sound which made Q different from K. This sound, 
as I have said above, was liked by the Latins, and therefore 
they retained the koppa. The Greeks did not use the sound, 
and therefore soon dropped the symbol which they had taken 
from the Phoenician alphabet; it could never have been of 
use to them, for there is no trace of any period in Greek 
during which k was passing into it: the transition would 
seem to have been immediate. It is this transitional sound 
which the Latin Q represents ; only the transition was never 
accomplished in Latium, though it was in the rest of Italy 1 . 
Change of Exactly analogous to the change from K to it and p is 
5 ° P al that from G to ft and b ; and here also we have the middle 
step denoted by the Latin gu. Here too the %i is not para- 
sitic in every case; thus in pinguis the u is a suffix, found in 
7ra%-i;-?, and a new suffix has been added in the Latin; simi- 
larly in breuis for bregh-u-is {(Bpa^-v-^). But it is parasitic 
in tinguo, the Greek reyyco, in urguere, where the language 
has presented the simpler form urgere, &c. 3 Rather fre- 
quently the v has forced out the preceding g, and thus given 
rise to an apparent strengthening; in reality there is a loss. 
Such cases are uiuere for guig-u-ere; compare the old Norse 
kvik, our old English "quick," and Sanskrit jiv 4 ; bre(gh)uis, 
&c. mentioned above; in these the v is original. In fruor 
for frugu-or (frug-es) both g and v have fallen out. The 
Latin words so far have no Greek equivalent which shews 
any corresponding change. But answering to uor-are for 
guor-are (Indo-European GAR) is Greek ftop-d, where the 
guttural has passed into the labial : (g) uen-ire is in Greek 
ftaiveiv for ftav-yeiv, and the original guttural is kept in 

1 In the few Doric inscriptions where <? is found, it seems to be generally 
followed by o, see Ahrens, n. 88, and New Gratylus, p. 190. This seems to 
be an attempt, similar to the Latin, to express the after-sound more clearly. 

2 Corssen, i 2 . 85. 3 Krit. Beitr. 65, &c. 

4 I think that Corssen is right in thus explaining the word (Krit. Beitr. 
72), as opposed to Curtius, who treats the g itself as parasitic (Gr. Et. 527). 



XIV.] LABIALISM. 289 

Gothic kviman, our "come." The Latin, on the other hand, 
shews no change in grauis, where the Greek has /3<zpy?: but 
the Sanskrit is guru, so the u may be original, or at least 
there may ha^e been a by-form guar; and in the Greek 
itself we have the Boeotian ftava by the side of yvvr/, shew- 
ing that the old form must have been yvava, the Anglo-Saxon 
ciuena, our "quean." Perhaps the only certain case in which 
both languages have the labial is the certainly Graeco-Italian 
bov-, "a cow:" here all the other languages have the gut- 
tural; the Sanskrit is gdus, the German kuh. These exam- 
ples are sufficient to shew that the v is less frequently a mere 
Graeco-Italian sound after g than after Jc, as might have 
been expected from g being a softer and easier sound : but it 
certainly was so in some cases; and, whether original or 
parasitic, it equally had the power in Greek of turning the 
guttural into a labial. The Italians seem to have stopped 
at gu, as the Latins did at Jcv (qu). 

The same cause will probably account for the rare change Change of 
of the guttural aspirate in Greek. It becomes <£ in vl<f>-eiv, 
from the original root SNIGH 1 . Perhaps also i\a(f)-pc<; may 
exhibit a weaker form of the base which we see in eXa^v?: 
the v is there, which in Latin le(gh)u-is has been strong- 
enough to eject the guttural altogether. I have already 
mentioned the not unfrequent change in La/tin from gh to / 
in my account of the Latin Aspirates 2 , and said that the 
same explanation is possible; it rests principally on analogy, 
there being no middle step preserved by the Latin, as in the 
case of the unaspirated gutturals. But I know no other ex- 
planation which is at all probable. 

1 See p. 69. 

2 See p. 241. More examples (not all very certain) are to be found in 
Corssen, Krit. Beitr. 203—226. 



p. i, 1 9 



290 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 



2. Dentalism. 

Change of This change from K to t is much less frequent in Greek. 
In Latin it does not seem to occur, except in the late transi- 
tion of -do into -tio, &C. 1 , which is caused by the i being 
really a semi-vowel when another vowel follows: in these 
cases it is of course part of the suffix. So also was the 10 
(yd) in Greek, which we saw produced so much change 
among the Greek verbs ; as for example, irpaic-yw became 
7rpaT-yco and 7rparrco. These examples are quite enough to 
shew that y really has the power of turning a guttural into 
a dental : and justify us in assuming a parasitic y in cases 
where the change has happened in Greek without any suffix 
to explain it : especially when traces of the same action are 
discernible in the cognate languages. An undoubted middle 
step is given by the Sanskrit palatal ch, which is pro- 
nounced half way between the guttural and the dental, and 
was probably caused by an attempt to sound k without bring- 
ing the tongue far enough back, so that the organs are partly 
in the position for sounding k, partly in that which produces 
the palatal breath y, which therefore slips out involuntarily 
after the imperfect k, and the whole result is ch or, perhaps 
better, tsch, if we pronounce the t and s very quickly. In 
the examples which I am about to give from the Greek, the 
y does not seem to have been very fully heard, though it had 
the power to change the k to r and then fell out : so that 
the order of sound was k, ay, ry, t 2 . In the verbs and 
nouns mentioned under the head of assimilation, where the 
y was part of the suffix, it left a permanent trace of itself in 
the doubling of the consonant. This difference of result in 
the cases where the y was radical, and where it was only 
parasitic is, I think, no more than we should expect. 

1 See p. 277. 3 See Introductory Lecture, p. 12. 



XIV.] DENTALISM. 291 

The certain examples in Greek are not very numerous, 
and have indeed been mostly mentioned before. Thus rea-- 
o-apes, and Sanskrit chatvdras, are instances of Dentalism, 
though we saw that the Italian dialects gave us the labial in 
the same word. These numerals were of course peculiarly 
liable to corruption : they are almost the commonest cur- 
rency of language : from their being necessarily used in barter 
they are liable to foreign influence more than any other words : 
a fact which may be the key to the perplexing agreement 
of numerals in totally distinct languages, and to the strangely- 
altered forms of some of the Sanskrit numerals. This nume- 
ral, katvar, of the Indo-European had apparently two sepa- 
rate indistinctly pronounced forms before its separation kyat- 
var, whence rerFapes, and kvatvar, whence quattuor: unless 
we rather believe that these weakenings took place after the 
ultimate separation, and so the agreement of ricraape^ and 
chatvdras would be accidental : this is most probable, for the 
Graeco-Italians are not likely to have had more than one 
form. Just the same variety of the Greek and Latin forms 
is seen in t& and quis, where the Sanskrit has the original 
k in kis; parallel however to re and que, which are prob- 
ably from the same base, the Sanskrit has cha, correspond- 
ing again to the Greek. Lastly, rl-co corresponds gene- 
rally to Sanskrit CHI, so that here also we have probably 
an instance of dentalism : no Latin word can be connected 
with these : for that timeo 1 belongs to the same family seems 
unlikely both from its meaning and from the t, for there is 
no evidence of the t occurring for K in Latin : both tlco and 
chi have many meanings, but the radical idea seems to be to 
"search," and then "tell over," "count;" and so in Greek "to 
estimate," "honour;" in Sanskrit to "collect." These forms are 
all which are given by Curtius as certain 2 : and he observes 
that in all of them the original k was followed by either l, 
1 Benfey, Sk. Lex. s.v. chi. a Gr. Et. 426—430. 

19—2 



292 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION [Lect. 

or the cognate e ; a fact which would very much assist the 
slipping in of the parasitic sound. 

Change of The change from G to 8 is exceedingly rare and uncer- 
tain, occurring mostly in isolated dialectical forms. Curtius, 
however, explains though somewhat doubtfully by this pro- 
cess the verb fao) 1 . This is for Bida by the regular process 
of Greek assimilation 2 . This & he would connect with GI, 
the simpler form of the old root which appears lengthened 
in Sanskrit, as J IV, and probably labialised in Greek, as 
BIF in /3t(F)o?, &c. If it seem odd that the same root 
should have been both labialised and dentalised in Greek, so 
as to produce the dissimilar forms /Sioco and £doo : this is no 
more than certainly took place in the interrogative pronoun : 
from which come the two Greek derivatives r/? and irolo^. 
The probability of the derivation is increased by the form 
Sl-acra, where the St, perhaps through the influence of the 
following diphthong, has not been affected. Some cases 
where 7 passed into 8 by assimilation have been already 
mentioned. 

Change of The aspirate GH has passed into in Oepfios already 
mentioned by the side of the Sanskrit gharma. It is formus 
in Latin, but we have seen that f is the regular representa- 
tive of initial dh, which was probably the Graeco-Italian 
form. No other example of this form seems to be certain 3 . 

Change of There are in Latin one or two well-known examples of 
the transiti n from D to b. These are bis, the older form 
duis (which is also the Sanskrit form) being given by 
Festus 4 : here the u is part of the root, and is seen in duo, 
duplex, du-bius, &c. Again, the old form of helium is duel- 
lum "division:" duellatores occurs even in Plautus 5 ; and 
bonus was originally duonus, already quoted as occurring on 

1 lb. 431. 2 s e e p . 271. 

a Gr. Et. 433. 4 Corssen, i 2 . 125. 

5 Capt, 68. 



D tob. 



XIV.] PARASITIC DENTAL. 293 

the epitaph of Scipio. Here the u may have been either 
radical or parasitic ; the derivation is uncertain. Corssen 
(l. c) thinks that it was " irrational" for all, which seems 
very improbable. But there can be no doubt that in all the 
w-sound assimilated the d to b, and then passed out or com- 
bined with it as Corssen prefers to explain it. I know no 
certain examples in Greek : Curtius mentions some very 
dubious ones 1 . 



3. Parasitic d before y or i. 

This peculiar change has been for the first time 
thoroughly investigated by Curtius 2 . I think that some 
of his conclusions are doubtful, and particular points have 
been assailed by different critics. Of the main principle 
however I think there can be no doubt, though it may be 
wrongly applied in special cases. I will give you the main 
results to which Curtius comes and the commoner examples : 
those who wish to see the further evidence supplied by 
uncommon forms and glosses must find it in his own pages. 

We saw that hy could frequently change into f in verbs, The appa- 
where 8 was the termination of the root, and y the initial l^y^nto^. 
letter of the suffix : y passed into the weak dental spirant z, 
by assimilation, and thus for hy we had dz, that is f. So 
cj)paB-yco became cfrpdfo : and there are numerous examples 
of nouns where the same change took place. Thus Zeu? was 
for Ayei>?, from DIV or DYU : Bed became £a in the Lesbian 
dialect 3 : Zdnvv6o<$ maybe ht-aKavOo-, "the thorny island 4 ,'' 

1 Gr. Et. 424. 2 Gr. EL 550—583. 

3 So fd rdv <rdv Iteav, Theok. xxix. 6 : see AJxrens, 1. 45. 

4 We might compare "Thorn-ey" near Ely, but perhaps Thorn is here 
the proper name which occurs so often in the North of England, e.g. in 
Thom-by, Thorn-thwaite : see Ferguson's Northmen in Cumberland avd 
Westmorland, a book distinguished by method and sound judgment. 



294 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

on the analogy of BiavOfc, Aiatcpla, &C. 1 : and the same form 
fa is found as an intensive (" through and through," " tho- 
roughly") in Greek commonly as £a#eo?, ^afiev^, &c. Again, 
Trefa is 7reS-to9 : dpl^rjXo^ is dpi-ByrjXos, perhaps as Curtius 
suggests for dpc-Bif-rjXos ; pl£a is fpi&-ya, &c. In all these 
examples the B is radical, and the f therefore to be expected. 
But how are we to explain forms like e. g. £vyov ? This is 
from YUG, and all the cognate languages give us y or its 
regular substitute. It seems impossible to avoid the con- 
clusion that this f is another variation from original y, 
another attempt to avoid the disagreeable sound which 
resulted in a weak B being heard before it : J therefore, 
that is By, is not a substitute for y, but the combination of y 
with another involuntary sound. Here the fact is undoubted, 
and the explanation seems to me the best possible. The By, 
according to Curtius, passed into different forms, which I 
will give in order. 
YwitK^ (i) By appears as f : in %uyov, in £e<z or tpid, the San- 

5 appears skrit yava, in gfy/u'a from YAM, which occurs in Sanskrit in 
as ** the general sense of "restraint:" a regular substitution from 
the same root gives us rffjuepo?, and it is not impossible that 
rjv-la may be from the same root by the change, rather 
common in Greek, of p, to v. Again we have By as f in §»- 
//.05 and ^vfjLTj, compared with Sanskrit yHsha and Latin ius. 
In none of these is there radical B ; which therefore must be 
supposed to be produced involuntarily. Next Curtius ex- 
plains in this way with great probability the double verb- 
forms in a£o> and aw, &c. I have already often mentioned 
that aw is a modification of original ay a or ayo, the y having 
fallen out : but it is quite possible that before it fell out it 
may have engendered a preceding B from the neglect of clear 
pronunciation : thus avro-ayo-fit would become avrt-ayco, and 
on one side avrt-dw, on the other avri-aByoo or dvTiafa. This 
1 Gr. Et. 544. 



XIV.] PARASITIC DENTAL. 295 

etymology seems to me peculiarly ingenious, and will explain 
all cases where the double form occurs : though in some of 
course it is possible that the 8 may be radical, as XcOd^o) 
from \c0a8-. It also explains the numerous verbs in ifa ; 
thus v/3pl%(x) is vftpiByco from vfipi-yo-ya. 

(ii) By takes the form of 81. This is principally in the (ii) as 5i; 
termination -810-, which is not of very common occurrence, 
it occurs in prji-Bio<;, a/-8to? from pela and del respectively ; 
in both the combination of vowels would be difficult to 
sound, before the termination yo or to, and hence according 
to Curtius the parasitic 8 arose between them : wherever 
-8io? occurs it is always preceded by a vowel. It forms 
adjectives from some roots under the like condition, as 0"^e- 
Sto?, d{A-(j)d-8io<;, crrd-Bios &C. 1 Curtius combines with these 
the form t&o? as the possessive pronoun of the third person 
for crFe-^to?, through FtSto? : the weakening of the e to 1 
might be explained by assimilation, as in <j§'kji for afe-ai. 
This derivation is very probable : but the 8 might be part of 
the root which probably ended in d in Graeco-Italian, if we 
may judge from med and ted which are accusatives as well as 
ablatives in Plautus 2 : also the Sanskrit adjectives are mad- 
iya and twad-iya: and so Bopp explains it. Benfey regards 
all the terminations in -Bco as weakened from original -ryo. 

(iii) By appears as 8e. This is limited again to a few (Hi) as 5e g 
nouns in -Seo?, as d8e\<f)L-8eo<;. Certainly here at least the 
8 is not radical : though here also we might assume an 
original tyo. 

(iv) By loses the original y and only the parasitic 8 is (iv) as 5. 
left. This is more certain than the last two cases, at least in 
dialectical forms as the Boeotian 8vyov for %vyov, lepd88o) for 
i€p-a8yco or lep-ayco. The occurrence of 8vyov beside £vyov 
and the Latin iug-um seems to me to make the evidence for 

1 Gr.Et. 557. a e.g. Aul. 120. 



296 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION [Lect. 

the theory complete in that case. This involuntary 8 is 
further assumed by Curtius in several dubious words. Such 
are the particle 8ij which he explains as originally (8)yd, from 
the pronominal base ya, so that the meaning would tally 
with that of the German "ja," our "yea:" rjBrj, as he thinks, 
stands to Brj as rj firjv to /bbrjv. Corssen 1 connects Brj and 8t)v, 
and also the Latin suffixes -dum, -dem, -do &c. with the div 
"a day," I think less probably : though diu is certainly from 
that base and means originally "all day." In such forms as 
these the derivation must be always uncertain ; there is no 
necessary correspondence as to meaning to guide us, and the 
words being common have probably suffered so much from 
use that their original form also must be guessed at. Curtius 
explains in the same way the rather numerous adverbs in 
-8ov, -$t)v or -Sa 2 , which he regards as originally cases from 
adjectives in ya, with parasitic 8, like those which end in 
-Blos or -Seo?, except that here all trace of the y is lost. 
Thus we have a^e86v by cr^eSt^ 3 : Karo)/jia-86v by /caroo/jLa- 
Sto? : and the variation between aZrjv, aBrjv and ahhrjv would 
be explained by an original form aa-(8)yrjv, where the y 
either fell out without trace leaving the preceding vowel 
short, or after lengthening it 4 , or finally was assimilated to 



1 Krit. Beitr. 500. 2 Gr. Et. 570. 3 II. v. 830. 

4 This without doubt is the explanation of koKos and tcaXds, Taos and i'<ros. 
They are by-forms and were produced in a transitional period ; each sur- 
vived in the language, and therefore there is nothing strange in our finding 
both even in the same line (as Theok. vi. 19 ; viii. 19). Similar variations 
in Latin are not so easy to explain : a great list is given by Lachmann (on 
Lucr.i. 360) but with no explanation : see also Munro on Lucr. iv. 1259. In th<? 
common cases such as nlger, nig(e)ri, no doubt even after the e was omitted 
in writing, enough of its sound was retained in the r, to allow the root vowel 
to be pronounced short or long. In piisus, p&sillus &c. the cause is clearly 
accent. Lastly where the same word occurs both long and short, e.g. cotur- 
nix and cdturnix, uietus and uietus &c, I think that in nine cases out of 
ten the change is from long to short : so that the new form would represent 
that regular weakening of the ordinary Latin of which I have said so much. 
But there are other cases which cannot be so explained. 



XIV.] PARASITIC DENTAL. . 297 

the 8, as in lepciSSco (see last page). Similarly the suffixes 
-8e and -fe would be explained as modifications of (8)ye from 
the pronominal root ya. Lastly the same involuntary 8, 
which has expelled its parent y is assumed by Curtius to 
explain patronymics in -8a, names of beasts in -8eu, nominal 
bases in -a8-, and -l8-: that in these last the 8 was no 
essential part of the suffix is proved he thinks, by the double 
forms, e.g. ^v-l-o^ and /jl^v-l8-o<;, crcfrpayiv and crcppaylBa &c. : 
he believes the suffix u to have been originally long ; it then 
necessarily parted into Xy before case-suffixes beginning with 
a vowel, as is regularly the case in Sanskrit (e.g. blii, bhiy- 
as) ; and so as elsewhere a 8 sprang up before this y. 

These are the principal cases in which Curtius assumes Estimate 
his parasitic 8. The strongest argument for his view is fabiu/i/' ' 
well stated by Schleicher 1 : "in the stem-formations of the °f these 

J t > changes. 

Indo-Germanic, y is an extraordinarily common, d is a rare 
element, so that there is hardly another possible way of 
bringing these Greek formations into harmony with those of 
the kindred languages." This consideration must at least 
prevent us from regarding the assumption as merely arbi- 
trary : and it is much more improbable that in every case 8 
should be weakened from r, a weakening for which the 
Greek shews no special liking. The argument brought 
against the theory that it is improbable that one and the 
same sound should appear in so many different forms, is 
answered, I think, with great force by Curtius. He says 2 : 
"the less we regard as probable an isolated deviation with no 
apparent reason from the path of regular substitution in the 
case of those sounds which remain to all time in common 
use in a language, so much the more decisively may we 
allow sporadic variation for these sounds in it which we 
perceive to be from the very beginning vanishing out of it." 

1 Comp. 21P>. 2 Gr. Et. 559. 



298 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

Such a sound is especially y in Greek : in the earliest records 
of the language we find only the imperfect substitutes for it : 
and it is certainly not improbable that at a still earlier period, 
when it was still heard, the imperfect attempts at pro- 
nouncing it may have produced by its side a letter which is 
itself indistinctly sounded in Greek, and so in process of 
time out of these two indistinct sounds, one distinct sound 
may have arisen. At all events, as Schleicher prudently 
sums up, "what every one allows in some cases (^vyov, Bvyov, 
and %0e? for ghyas) is also possible in others." 



4. Parasitic y. 

Parasitic This is principally found after B, and therefore produces 

the same results as parasitic B before original y\ but they 
are much fewer, for y, a sound difficult to a Greek, was not 
very likely to spring up involuntarily, and clearly could only 
do so in that early prehistoric time when y had not yet 
vanished out of the language; so the traces of it are few. 
It seems to occur in fop/ca? (Herod. IV. 194), the dialectical 
form of Bop teas, where the -8 is original; and rather oddly in 
the same word the y seems to have expelled the 8 and then 
vocalised itself, for we have the third form lop/c-e? (nom. plur.) 
in Hesychius 1 . On the strength of a gloss in Hesychius, 
Bel/crjXa, el/coves, and the form Bei/ceXov, which occurs (Anih. 
Pal. V. 260) in this sense, Curtius believes that the original 
form of the common root IK, whence eUcov, eoitca, tWAo?, 
&c.was AIK, which produced a parasitic y said then vanished; 
so that ovBe eoLfcev in Homer should be scanned ovBe yeyoc- 
K€v, not fefoittev 2 : this I think is very probable, for there is 
nothing in the cognate languages to justify a digamma in 
the word. Lastly, as By where the y was radical was some- 

1 Gr. Et. 586, &c. 2 As stated at p. 118. 



XIV.] ASPIRATION. 299 

times assimilated to &$, so here also we may explain the 
peculiarities connected with AT, " to fear." Thus eSSeicrev is 
frequent in Homer, and frequent too is the lengthening of 
a previous short syllable, as fieya re Seivov re 1 , and ovre tL 
fie Seo? eV^ez^ 2 . These become quite intelligible on the sup- 
position that y was produced involuntarily after 8, so that 
Seo? was Syeo? : and no other theory that I know will explain 
eSSeto-ev: for I suppose it does not explain much to call it 
a "poetical license." What will explain the "license" it- 
self? Further examples (not perhaps equally certain) may 
be found in Curtius 3 . 



5. Aspirating unaspirated letters. 

This takes place to some extent in Greek. The new h Involun- 
is clearly parasitic, and produced (when not initial) by letting rati™ of 
as it were a sigh of relief escape after the pronunciation of \ ard l f~ , 

° r r ters; found 

a difficult sound. As might be expected, it follows almost w* Sanskrit 
exclusively the hard explosive sounds. Some of these cases Greek. 
have been mentioned incidentally in the account of the 
Greek aspirates; the theory of their origin is considerably 
confirmed by the occurrence of this involuntary aspiration. 
A similar phenomenon is found in Sanskrit; and it may 
sometimes happen that the same word has been aspirated 
in the two languages. But there can be little doubt that 
such coincidences are accidental, and that each language 
pursued its own course separately in this respect. The aspi- 
rates thus found in Sanskrit corresponding to the Greek are 
always hard ones. 

The commonest cause of this parasitic h is the influence 
of an adjoining liquid or nasal, or a preceding o- 4 . Thus we 

1 II. xii. 10. 2 II. v. 817 ; Gr. Et. 585. 

3 Gr. Et. 583—590. 4 Gr. Et. 410. 



300 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

find <ppoi$os from nrpo, iirl^a-Opov instead of the common suffix 
-rpov, with fc\el0pov and some others : the fact that we have 
sometimes rpov and sometimes Opov, with no apparent reason 
for the difference, shews how thoroughly sporadic the change 
is. We have reef)- pa from TEP, whence Latin tep-eo; the 
Sanskrit keeps original a in tapas: Xu%-j/o? from \v/c-, e%ai- 
<j)vr)<; from i%a7rivr)$ } where the nasal is the cause; so also 
t7%o?, (where the nasal seems to be intensive, as the base is 
probably AK,) /^7%o? but pey/cco, 6/j,(f)-rj from FEII; and seve- 
ral others given by Gurtius (I. a). The spirant has acted in 
o^/fa from SKID, Latin scindo; probably in crOe-vco, if this 
be a strengthened form of STA, which in Sanskrit becomes 
STHA; in o-%e\k by cTceXi? and cr/teXo?, and many others. 

In other cases it is not easy to assign any further cause 
than mere laziness; which operated of course irregularly, 
but yet affected some words permanently. Such are /3\i<p- 
apov, cro^)6?, and aa(j)-r]<;: the two latter are from SAP, in 
Latin sapio, &c. Curtius rejects Benfey's explanation that 
the h may be caused here by a v; that /3\icf)apov is for 
/3\e7r-F apo-, for -vara is at least a Sanskrit suffix; and cro<£o? 
is similarly for cro7r-Fo-?: it seems to me not improbable, at 
least for the first two, and o-a^rj^ may have been formed on 
the analogy of <xo</>6?. I know of no reason for the certain 
change of AEK into Se^ojuao, TTK into rev^co, of tttv/c, from 
original IITK in Trrvaaco into irTvyj). The change of the 
labial is much more common; thus acf>-evo<; is the Sanskrit 
ap-nas, which is Yedic, but occurs in apnas-vant, "efficacious 1 ," 
and the Latin ops, &c. ; contrast in-ops with apnas-vant; 
copia is co-opia 2 . From AHI comes d-XeLcfxo, from 2KA1T 
o-/ca</)o?, and rpecfyoy may be only a secondary form of Tpeiro): 
further examples may again be found in Curtius. 
No certain There is no certain example of this /t being produced 

1 Benfey, Lex. s.v. 2 Gr. Et. 447. 



XIV.] ASPI RATIO X. 301 

after a soft explosive sound. Several possible ones are dis- example of 
cussed by Curtius 1 . But for all of them I think other ex- tion^lofi 
planations are possible. Thus payola certainly needs not be sounds - 
connected with Fpay (pqypv/ju), it being quite possible, as 
Curtius suggests, to class it with pr/cro-co (dpdo-aco), which 
imply a k, or even with Hesychius' gloss fipcuciai oi t payees 
tottol. Curtius seems to allow the change in irayv<;, which 
he combines with Trrjyvv/ju, 71-77709, Trayos, &c. But here also 
we have seen that the older form of the root is II AK 2 : so 
that irayys, iray-pr), &c. may be formed by aspiration directly 
from this original form. 

All these aspirated words must be kept distinct from 
those where the aspirate is original; they may be known 
by the fact that the aspirate (or the regular substitute) 
occurs in none of the cognate languages, except in some few 
cases in the Sanskrit, which shared with the Greek these 
peculiar hard aspirates. 

In Latin, where the aspirates had early vanished, no Aspiration 
change of the sort was likely to take place. Bat both in an ^ 1^^ 
Greek and Latin irregular aspiration at the beginning f a . ? 66 '. 

01 00 ginning of 

a word seems to have been known. I have already said a word, 
that this is possible among people who are in the habit of 
leaving out the breathing where it ought to occur at the 
beginning of a word; and both Greeks and Romans were in 
the habit of doing this. Different as was the origin of h 
in. the two languages, it is quite certain that the letter was 
rapidly vanishing in each of them at the classical period 
of their literature, or even earlier; and the tendency has 
gone on increasing among the inheritors of these languages, 
till, for the modern Greek at least, the sound is utterly lost, 
while the Romance languages have partially preserved it, with 
great irregularity of usage. Still there is also an unmistake- 

1 Or. Ft. 450—458. 3 See p. 223. 



302 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

able tendency to introduce the breathing where it ought 
not to be, as distinct though less frequent in its operation 
than the other. First, in Greek, apart from numerous plain 
errors on inscriptions, such as aryeiv, eirl, et?, &C. 1 , we may- 
observe a strong inclination to aspirate an initial v; e.g. in 
vScop, vtto, v<TTepo<$, &c. where it is certain that there was 
no aspirate in the original language. This seems to me 
very natural. We have seen that the Greek v was a modi- 
fied u, probably like the German il; and it will be evident to 
any one who makes the attempt how difficult it is to pro- 
nounce the sound without a breath slipping out involuntarily 
before it: and in exact accordance with this theory the 
Boeotian, which keeps the old sound, and denotes it by ov* y 
keeps the proper smooth breathing; e.g. in ovfjuh, ovScvp, &c. 3 : 
although in other words the Boeotians were by no means 
peculiarly averse to the rough breathing, even inserting it 
in words where it was absent in other dialects, as iwv for 
€70). The Aeolic, however, in the main inclined most to 
drop initial h: the Attic retained it most, and also used it 
most often wrongly; thus the Aeolic keeps ajjifjue^ for dcrfih, 
while the Attic aspirates, as ^et?. I agree with Curtius 
here in regarding the rough breathing as a simple mistake, 
on the analogy of i^et?, where it denotes a lost y\ rather 
than suppose that it is due to the cr passing into h, as dh/j,es, 
and then becoming misplaced: as he says, the a does its 
part in lengthening the preceding vowel, and therefore would 
have exerted a double influence if it had become the breath- 
ing as well. But I think the theory more probable in the 
case of rj/jiai, from AS, as I have already said 5 ; and some 
other words, as lepos for laapos, Doric lapos, Sanskrit ishira 6 . 



1 Gr. Et. 617. 2 See p. 158. 

3 See Ahrens, i. 169. 4 Gr. Et. 619. 6 See p. 230. 

6 See Gr. Et. 358. This rare Sanskrit word is said to mean "strong," 
sound," " fresh," and so we are enabled to get at the primary sensuous 



XIV.] ASPIRATION. 303 

Still many cases remain where no explanation can be given, 
except that they are mistakes. Such are the already often- 
quoted tWo? (compared with fc/co?, and the compounds 
AevKirnros, "AkfciTnros 1 ); the Attic rfkios and Zoos, which have 
the smooth breathing in all the other dialectical forms: and 
Curtius suggests that the rough breathing of 0/309, " a boun- 
dary " (Ionic ovpos, Doric opos), may have sprung up through 
a wish to distinguish it from opos, "a mountain 2 :" but another 
derivation is possible. Lastly, Curtius gives the Attic afjuap- 
relv, whereas Homer said rj/xfiporov. These examples — all 
common words — are enough to shew the prevalence of the 
error: the deviation of the last one is somewhat uncertain; 
but as to the others there can be no reasonable doubt, from 
comparison with other languages and dialects, that they 
commenced originally with the smooth breathing, and that 
the rough A is a Greek, generally Attic, addition. 

In the Latin this corruption seems to have been of 
later date. According to Corssen 3 , h is never wrongly in- 
serted in the inscriptions of the Republic. The grammarians 
however of the first century B.C., and the early Empire, 
seem to have been very uncertain in their deliverances on the 
subject : still where wrong, they err almost entirely on the 
side of leaving out an h which is etymologically correct. The 
feeling on the point is well shewn by the often quoted dic- 
tum of Nigidius Figulus : " Rusticus fit sermo, si aspires 
perperam." In conformity with this we find that in the best 
and oldest MSS. the h is often wrongly omitted, as arena, 
aruspex, &c. : rarely wrongly inserted, as in humor, humerus, 

meaning of lepos and explain the use in certain combinations which are 
unintelligible so long as we have only the derived sense of " sacred," e. g. 
lepou rjfxap, lepos o/xfipos (Soph. O. T. 1428), and even lepos fadls {U> xvi. 417), 
and Xpov Kvp.a (Eur. Hipp. 121G), Lidd. and Scott, s.v. Thence as what was 
consecrated to the gods must be sound and perfect, the word came early in 
Greek to mean " sacred." 

1 Schleicher, Cump. 219. 2 See p. 81. 3 Aiuspr. i 2 . 105. 



304 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

&c. These however are trifles to the extraordinary blunders 
committed by the stone-masons in the inscriptions of the 
fourth century of the Christian era : such as hac for ac, hor- 
nat, hextricata, exhistimantes, &c, quoted by Corssen 1 . Still 
this effusion of aspirates was certainly late : and Catullus' 
foe, Arrius, was probably an exception 2 . 



6. Auxiliary {inorganic) vowels. 

Character These vowels are perhaps the farthest extension of the 

sounds: principle which we are considering. They frequently appear 



most coin 
mon in 



to be actual gain, and not loss to a word, causing the addi- 
Greek. tion of a new syllable : and so are difficult to reconcile with 
the other manifestations of phonetic change. Yet these 
vowels are distinctly inorganic, as can in almost every case 
be proved by comparison with other languages. That they 
should be dynamic is excessively improbable ; when change 
of meaning is likely to have been intended by sounding 
eXa^u? instead of Xa^v^ (laghu, le(gh)uis, &c), or akeyeivo? 
beside dXyewos ? It is from vowel-insertions like the last, or 
from vowel-prefixes like i-%6i$ for %#e?, that we gain the 
conviction of the really phonetic character of these sounds : 
and accordingly I believe that they arose first from the diffi- 
culty of pronouncing a consonantal group, which became 
much easier when parted by a slight vowel-sound (if in the 
middle of a word), or if preceded by the same, when initial. 
Instances of this are well-known in modern languages, e. g. 
in the French espece, esperance, from species, sperare, &c. : 
and a vowel similarly prefixed occurs in the late Latin of the 
fourth century after Christ, as ispirito, istatua 3 . But it is 
not easy to see why this use should be extended to words 
which do not begin with a compound sound, but only with 

1 lb. p. 110. 2 Catul. 84. 3 Corssen, i. 289. 



XIV.] AUXILIARY LETTERS. 305 

an easy letter like \ or p, p, or v : and it is especially before 
these that this inorganic vowel is found ; it occurs very 
rarely before a simple explosive sound ; before t, it, (f> never 1 . 
But the reason for this difference is not far to seek ; a pro- 
tracted sound has something of the vowel-character about it, 
and therefore a vowel can easily slip through the lips before 
it 2 : before a momentary sound the vowel must have been 
consciously added. Accordingly I believe that this new para- 
sitic sound sprang up before certain liquids and nasals after it 
had been familiarised to the " Sprachgefuhl" by use in cases 
where it was almost necessary. I do not deny that in some 
cases a prefixed vowel may be not parasitic, but the remnant 
of some corrupted prefix, most naturally of a preposition : 
and this, as might be expected 3 , is often assumed by Prof. 
Pott : e. g. he regards dpuipyco as diropbepyco, like diropbdaaco, 
&c. 4 I do not think this likely, because I know no analogy 
for a similar loss of it ; but in some cases such a truncation 
is doubtless possible. Still in the great majority of cases I 
have no hesitation in regarding the vowel as the purely pho- 
netic result of indolent articulation. 

I will give examples first of the vowel when initial 5 , (i) Initial 
Several have been incidentally mentioned in the course of 
these lectures. Thus d-arrjp, as we saw, is from STAR : 
whence also darpaTrray and doTpairr) : to derive them from 
a root AS, "to throw" (which occurs in Sanskrit, but not, I 
think, in the other languages) is not so good. Similarly 
d-o-Traipco is an easier form of (nralpco : a-a<j)i is a Lesbian 
form of crfyi: tcls and ^Oh have the by-forms i/erk and 
ey^e? : the rare word o-tXos 6 seems to be most naturally 
connected with TAA in rXdco : ovo/xa is most likely for 

1 Gr. Ft. 655. 

2 Compare the irrational vowels in Latin, u before I, and e before r, 
pp. 179—185. 

3 See pp. 45-47. 4 FA. Forsch. 11 2 . 386. 

5 See Gr. Ft. 650— 6G0. 6 Aescb. S. c. T. 18. 

P. L. 20 



before an 
explosive 
sound. 



306 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

o-yvojia. Before a single liquid we have the parasitic e in 
€-\a%u?, i-p€Tfics, i-pevyco (Lat. ructo from RUG), i-pvdpos; 
i-\avva) for i-Xa-vvco 1 ; a in d-\el<f)co y a-{iei{3co, d-jnikyco, &c. ; 
6 in o-X/7-0?, 6-pvy-/uLcs, and perhaps "O-Xv/ultt-os from 
AAMII, by the Aeolic variation of a and u. There are 
plenty of other examples, more or less uncertain, of the 
vowel in this connection. The e is probably prefixed before 
V in elpyoo for i-fepy-co (Sk. vrij), i-fepa-rj (Sk. vrish), 
Very rare ieLKoaiv for i-foKoac (ui-ginti) % . Before a simple explosive 
sound the best examples are perhaps d-fcovco, c-fceWco by 
KeXXa), d-$dtj, and most likely oSovs ; it is not probable that 
if the vowel had been original (so that the word should be 
derived from ED, " to eat"), it would have been lost in all 
the derived languages ; Sanskrit danta, Latin dent-is, Lithu- 
anian dant-i-s, and German Zahn. The cases are very few 
in all, but they are peculiar extensions of the common 
usage which I cannot explain. It will be seen that the 
vowels regularly found in this use are a, e, o, the strongest 
vowels. The reason is probably this : at first the prefixed 
vowel would be the same as the radical vowel 3 , though in 
actual use there are plenty of exceptions to this rule ; and 
the vowel A in its triple form occurs, as I have already 
remarked, much oftener in roots than I or TJ. 
(ii) Medial I pass to the insertion of a vowel between consonants 
vowels. - n ^ e middle of a word. These cases are more doubtful 
because sometimes the fuller form may be the older, and the 
vowel have been lost out of it. Thus Schleicher 4 regards the 
e in opeyco as inserted, and by comparison with Sanskrit ARJ, 
arrives at an Indo-European ARG. But the Latin form is 
reg-o, and we have rak-jan, " to reach," in Gothic. It is there- 
fore at least as probable — I think more so — that the older 
form was RAG ; and that o, not e, was the auxiliary vowel ; 

1 Gr. Et. G54. 2 Comp. p. 78. 

3 W. Christ, Lautlehrc, 19, quoted by Curtms. 4 Comp. p. 76. 



XIV.] AUXILIARY LETTERS. 307 

and therefore opoyvta the older form of opyvid. Other exam- 
ples, which seem more certain, are given by Schleicher and 
Curtius 1 : e.g. aX-e-yeivo? mentioned above; rj\-v-0ov from the 
simple root EA (=EP), whence the secondary root is EA@; 
IJLaX-a-fcos by paX/cos (Hesychius) — the 6 in /idkOaKO^ is again 
the result of dynamic strengthening of the root — SoX-t-^o? 
from original dargha, Sanskrit dirgha; a\-e-%a> beside akK-rj, 
the Latin arc-eo. Apparently we have a suffixed e forming 
for many verbs a secondary base in common use. Thus ME A 
forms its present stem by the affix yo, as fieXkw : but this 
stem is phonetically increased by e, whence comes the future 
/jueXX-rj-crco, and the aorist ifieW-rj-o-a. Similarly MAX, "to 
fight," has a secondary form ^a%e, which is actually used for 
the present in Ionic, and forms the aorist e-fia-^e-ad^v. 
These new forms, which are rather common 2 , have nothing 
to do with the formation of stems, for the new vowel com- 
monly runs through them all : and as it is generally rather 
late, and produces no change of meaning in the verb, the 
vowel is probably a mere phonetic insertion, closely akin to 
the " connecting vowel," which is so important in the conju- The "con- 
gation of verbs. The object of that vowel is to preserve the vow "}» 
final consonant of a root from all possible injury when it is 
connected with suffixes beginning with consonants ; e. g. in 
forming the second person BOA or fiov\, the Greeks insert e 
before aai, as f3ov\-e-craL, f3ov\-c-ac, fioi'Xet,, so that in all 
these changes the \ has not suffered ; on the contrary the 
Latins, who in a few verbs {ES, ED, VEL, FER, &c), do not 
regularly employ a connecting vowel, lost the final consonant 
in vols, nils, ids. I cannot agree with Schleicher, who (fol- 
lowing Bopp) regards this vowel as a demonstrative root* 



1 Gr. Et. 656—660. 

2 Curtius gives thirty-eight examples in his excellent School Grammar, 
ulncli is translated and published in Dr Smith's scries, see p. 10S. 

; C<mp. p. 343. 

20—2 



308 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

whose original form was a (preserved in Sanskrit) and weak- 
ened in other languages, in Greek to e and o, in Latin to i 
and u, according to the following sound. I can see no proof 
of such a view : and prefer to regard the vowel as simply 
phonetic, and belonging in its origin to the class which we 
are here considering ; at a later time of course it became one 
of the arbitrary forms of grammar. It is worth observing 
that the oldest verbs (so far as we can trace the historical 
development of the verb) in Sanskrit, in Greek, and in Latin, 
do not generally possess these connecting vowels ; and it is just 
as likely that they never had them, as that they had them 
and lost them. Bopp's objection however is no doubt forcible, 
that a the strongest of the three primary vowels is least of 
all adapted for a mere phonetic link 1 ; and is not quite met 
by the reply that a does not occur in Greek 2 and Latin, 
and that the Sanskrit a is not the full vowel of the primitive 
language. Still the evidence seems to me to preponderate 
for the view that I have given. 
Auxiliary l n Latin there is, I think, no prefixed vowel as in the 

vowels in . . . . 

Latin. Greek : it was not in accordance with the genius of the 
language. Even within a word it was not common, with the 
exception of the regular connecting vowel — if the theory of 
the phonetic origin of this vowel be true. It is observable 
however that those verbs mentioned above as not regu- 
larly taking the connecting vowel, do take it irregularly, 
as (e)s-u-m{i), (e)s-u-mus, (e)s~u-nt(i) : so also fer-o-(mi), 
fer-i-mus, fer-u-nt(i), &c. Such further vowel insertion as 
occurs in Latin belongs to the early more than to the later 
period of its records : this is shewn by the Latin forms 
(already mentioned, see p. 164) of borrowed words, e.g. 
Aesc-u-lapius for 'AotcXt/ttio?, Alc-u-mena for 'AX/tyt?^ 8 , 

1 Comp. Grammar, vol. n. p. 694, English translation. 

2 Except perhaps a few verbs, such as cfy-a-^ucu, Trpi-a-jxat, &<s. 

3 e.g. Plaut. Ampli, 99. 



XIV.] AUXILIARY LETTERS. 309 

drach-u-ma for Bpa-^/uur} 1 , and the common mina for fxvu. 
These vowels (varying as we have seen according to the fol- 
lowing consonant) are not generally found in the later Latin. 
The fact too that auxiliary vowels are especially frequent 
in the Oscan 2 , shews that the principle was one originally 
common to the Italian with the Greek ; which naturally 
became less and less operative in Latin, as the vowel-system 
became with every century weaker. 

Schleicher thinks that um-e-vus (Sanskrit amsa), rub-e-r(o), 
gen-e-r(os), Greek yap-ft-pos, &c., are examples of the inser- 
tion 3 . I do not see why they should not be distinct Latin 
forms with the suffix -ero. Such difference of formation is 
perfectly common in the most certainly cognate words of 
different languages. Even though there may have been one 
common form in use in the time before the separation of the 
two peoples, yet after that separation a new form may easily 
have sprung up among one of the two nations, more agree- 
able to the phonetic laws which time had developed, and so 
superseded the old one. 



7. Auxiliary (inorganic) Consonants. 

These are not very numerous either in Greek or Latin, 
though sufficiently so to require a special mention. They 
are among the most decisive signs of a decomposing lan- 
guage, and therefore are rather to be looked for in 
more modern tongues, as gen-d-re and nom-b-re in the 
French 4 . A familiar instance may be found in English in 
the name of Ambleside in Westmorland ; which is by deri- 



1 Plaiit. Trin. 425 (ed. Brix). 

- Kirchhoff, ZeiUch. 1. 36, quoted by Curtius, Gr. Et. G56. 

3 Comp. p. 102. 

4 Schleicher, Comp. p. 233. 



310 INDISTINCT ARTICULATION. [Lect. 

vation Hamal-seat or -sett ; Hamal is a common Norse name : 
and the true form is still pretty nearly kept in the more cor- 
rect local pronunciation. In "thunder" the d is interesting, 
because it does not occur between two consonants, and yet is 
unquestionably a parasitic insertion : compare the Anglo- 
Saxon "thunjan" and German "Donner :" in some parts of 
the north of England the word is still rightly sounded as 
"thuner :" the very full sound of the first syllable seems to 
be the cause of the want of a connecting link between it and 
the following vowel. 

The examples in Greek are very sporadic. I give some 
from Schleicher (1. a). Thus we find dv-8-pos from dvep ; 
the Sanskrit nara with the same meaning seems to point 
to the 8 as being parasitic : fiecr-TjfjL-ft-pia, and {p)-j3-por6<; 
are well-known examples : in the latter the radical /jl has 
been expelled by the consonant which it joined to produce : 
and /jLe/jL-/3-\(D/ca stands for /ui-fiXco-tca from root MOA. 
There are a few others of the same kind. 

In Latin the only examples which are given by Schlei- 
cher 1 are the words in which p is inserted between m and s, 
or m and t : as hiem-p-s, sum-p-tum, &c. The greater ease of 
sound in the words so modified is obvious. 



Conclusion. I have thus endeavoured to set before you the main 
points in which the languages spoken by the Greeks and the 
Italians varied from the speech of their common forefathers 
— both from that of the Graeco-Italian race out of which 
they immediately sprang, and from that of the race to 
which we as well as all the civilised nations of Europe trace 

1 Comp. p. 266. 



XIV.] CONCL USION. 3 1 1 

our descent. I have endeavoured incidentally to point out 
any light which these divergences cast on the character of 
the different peoples. But my main object has been to point 
out the common reason of all these changes in language ; 
to convince you that they all sprang from the same desire for 
ease of articulation ; whether that tendency produced a 
weak or an indistinct sound instead of a stronger or a clearer 
one, the cause was the same. I have tried also to shew 
that all or nearly all apparent exceptions to this law are in 
reality confirmations of it, when understood in its most com- 
prehensive sense. I have in no case endeavoured to give all 
the examples which might have been given in support of the 
views advanced : if you care for the matter you will prefer, 
and it will be far more useful for you, to find others for 
yourselves : indeed I fear that I may sometimes have wearied 
you by giving you facts which you knew before. But my 
aim has been to present to you facts, old in the main, under 
a new light. Only so far as I have succeeded in giving the 
reason for what may have seemed to you before mere arbi- 
trary anomalies ; only so far as I have been able to trace 
many apparently isolated results to the operation of one 
common principle; just so far have I attained the object of 
these Lectures. 



INDEX. 



A, the vowel ko.t Qoxh v > 32 

A-sound, splitting of the (A = a, e, o), 

129 ; found throughout Europe, 130 ; 

analogies in England, ib. 
A to e, history of change from, 131 ; it 

passes into e in roots and suffixes, 

132 
A to o, the change from, less frequent 

before the Graeco- Italian period, 

133 ; instances in proof, 133, 4 ; com- 
monly retained before a guttural, 

133 
A, 0, U, long, weakened to e and i, 171 
A to a, e, 6, extension of, 137 ; Curtius 

asserts that for every Greek a, rj, w 

we may expect an original a, 137 ; 

difficult to prove, 138 
A final, origin of, in secondary roots, 

49 
a, the grammatical suffix of the first 

person in Greek perfects, 136 
Ablative mari and mare, 168 
Accent, in Sanskrit and in Greek, 111 
Corssen's theory of the original 

freedom of, 192 
Accentuation, Latin, common law of, 

200 ; depends on the quantity of the 

penultima, 201 

reaction of, upon quan- 
tity, 202; conflict between accent 
and quantity, ib. ; epitaph, fifth cen- 
tury b.c, quoted, ib. 

an older law assumed 

which differs from that in common 
use, 203; illustrated and explained, 
203, 4 

in other languages, 204 ; 

in Greece, ib.' and n.; in Sanskrit, 
205 ; the German family, ib. ; Cors- 
sen as an authority on accent, 206 

Aciles, 'AxiXXeus, 14 

dZeX<pos, 232 

6.8-nv and &58w, 296 

aede8, its original meaning, 120 n. 

Aeolic forms, 146, 148 

dycryetV, 109 



Aghi, 2x L s> anguis, 61 

ai as an intensified form of i, 119 

aides, aedes, 149 

ctiras, 80 

aKfiwv, 37 

&K0JK7I, 109 

akva, ltitos, equos, 80 

dxbXovdos, 121 

Albanian, 19 

dXevpov, 235 

alienus, origin of the e, 189 

Alliteration, 97—100 

d\(pr]aTTfjs, 65 

alumnus, 182 

amabare for amabaris, 260 

amasso, 198 

ap-apreTv but ij/i(3poTov, 303 

Ambleside, the name, 309 

d-fxipyui, 305; d-\ei(poj, d-fxeXyco, d-fiet- 

j8w, 306 
d/nvos, 236 
dfxireXos, d/nriXovs, 148 

d/XVfJL0JV, 161 

ang ustus, consonantal change from 
AGH, explanation of change, 219 

animae and animal, 204 

dcpevos, 300 

Aquiliw and AqulUlus, 181 

arbiter, 227 

arcesso, ib. 

dprryo}, dpKios, 222 

arfuerunt, adfuerunt, 227 

'Aptddvjj, 272 

dpojy-ds, dp-qyio, 117 

Articulation, weak, 123 ; indistinct, 
281 ; in English, 282 ; the result of 
laziness, 281 

indistinct, (1) Labialism, 

a name given by Prof. Curtius to tho 
change of k to tt and y, 283; possi- 
bility of this change, ib.; exempli- 
fied from Latin, Greek, &o., 284; 
caused by parasitic v, 285; the 
Greek tt the equivalent of Latin '/>/, 
ib.; further illustrations, 286; his- 
tory of the Latin Q, 287; change of 



3*4 



INDEX. 



G to /3 and 6, 288 ; change of GH to 
0, 289 
Articulation, indistinct, (2) Dentalism; 
change from K to r, 290 ; examples ' 
in Greek, 291; change of G to d, 
rare and uncertain, 292 ; change of 
G to 6, ib.; change of D to 6, ib. 

(3) Parasitic d before y or 

i, 293 ; the apparent change of Y into 
f, ib.; Y with parasitic 8 appears, 
(i) as f, 294; (ii) as 8l, (iii) as de, (iv) 
as 8, 295 ; these changes as estimated 
by Curtius and Corssen, 296; certain 
by-forms in a transitional period, 
ib. n. ; estimate of the probability of 
these changes, 297; Curtius and 
Schleicher on these changes, ib. 

(4) Parasitic y : y after 5, 

298; but few traces of this, ib. 

(5) Aspirating unaspirated 

letters, 299; involuntary aspiration 
of hard, letters, ib. ; frequently caused 
by mere laziness, 300; no certain 
example of the aspiration of soft 
sounds, 301 ; aspiration in Greek 
and Latin at the beginning of a word, 
ib.; various in the different dialects, 
302 ; in Latin the corruption of later 
date, 303 

. (6) Auxiliary (inorganic) 

vowels, character of these sounds, 
304; most common in Greek, ib.; 
vowel-insertions and vowel-prefixes, 
ib. ; (i) initial vowels, 305; rare be- 
fore an explosive sound, 306; (ii) 
medial vowels, ib.; examples adduced 
by Schleicher and Curtius discussed, 
306, 7; the "connecting vowel," its 
object, 307; auxiliary vowels in 
Latin, 308; some verbs take the 
connecting vowel, ib. 

(7) Auxiliary (inorganic) 

consonants, not very numerous either 
in Greek or Latin, 309 ; examples in 
Greek very sporadic, 310 

Aryan, the term applied only to the 
Eastern division, 18 

not properly applied to the 

primary race, 22 

its probable derivation, 22 

Aspirates, 55 — 59 

their pronunciation, 10, 263 

soft and hard, 55 ; doubt 

whether both classes are found in 
original language, 32, 56 ; in Gothic, 
58 ; hard aspirates recently develop- 
ed in Sanskrit, ib. 

pronunciation of, in Greek, 



263; transliteration of Greek into 

Latin, 14, 265 ; in modern Greek, ib. 
Aspiration at the beginning of a word, 

301 
of unaspirated letters in 

Greek, 249, 299 
Assibilation in Greek, 268; in Latin, 

277 
Assimilation, principle of, 178 
dvreov for d8-reov, 279 
d-arrip, 305 
aula and olla, 154 
Aurelius, 78 
aureolus, 186 
aurichalcum, 155 
Aurora, 78, 122 
ausculari, osculari, 155 
Auster, 78 
Auxiliary letters, 304 ; auxiliary vowels 

before groups of consonants, ib. ; and 

before liquids and nasals, 305 

— vowels inserted in 

Latin, 164, 308 
Avi, ois, ovis, 80 



B of comparatively recent use, 53 ; ex- 
emplified in /3A?7xw, balo, 53 

B Latin, equivalent to Oscan /, in the 
middle of a word, 242 

j3, produced by assimilation from V, 
273; by substitution in Laconian, 
234 

badisso, j3a8i£oj, 15 

(3avd = yvv>], 289 

bene, 186 

benevolus, 170 

BH Indo-European, 64 

bibo, 225 

plfos, pios, 292 

p\e<papov, 300 

Povhoixai, 234 

fiporos for /z(/3)/)OTOs, 310 

Bruges, Qptiyes, 14 

bubile, 235 

Burrus, Ilvppos, 14, 225 



C lost when initial, 254; lost before s, 

255 ; before t and n, 256 
calim, supcrcilium, 186 
casa, 253 
Case suffix os weakened to ns and is in 

Latin, 165 
Casmena, 238 
castrum, its different forms in England, 

7 
caussa, 16, 238 



INDEX. 



315 



cere, K&pa, in compounds, 39 

ce(s)na, 256 

X, history of the symbol, 128 

Xo-fio.1, x^uv, 27-4 

X#e's, how pronounced, 264; origin of 
6, 274, 298 

civis, 38 

clarus, clamor, loss of a, 194, 201 

Claudius and Clodius, 154 

claustrum for claud-trum, 279 

Climate, influence of, upon language, 6 

cognitus, shortening of the vowel, 203 

comissor, Kio/xafco, 184 

Comparatives in Greek as instances of 
assimilation, 268 

Compounds, Latin, weakened in the 
first member, 169; in the second 
member, 170; exceptions to the lat- 
ter, and their reasons, 172 

" Connecting- vowel," the, 307; gain of , 
to the Greek in causing less change 
of the root in Graeco-Italian 0, ge- 
nerally weakened in Latin to i, 167 

Consonants, Latin, of greater strength 
than Greek, 216 

general rules to determine 

their relative strength, 217 

1 momentary sounds strong- 

er than protracted, 217 

hard sounds are stronger 

than soft, 218 

unaspirated sounds strong- 
er than aspirated, 218 ; gutturals the 
strongest class, 219; illustrated from 
the Sanskrit, 220, 221 

relative strength of nasals 

and spirants, 221 

Substitution of, 222 

Change of hards to softs, 

k to 7 and g, 222 

Peculiar change of the hard 

guttural in Latin, 223 ; to what due, 
ib. 

. the various changes ex- 

emplified and discussed, 222 — 247 

substitution for momen- 
tary (unaspirated) sounds in Latin, 
226 

substitutes for spirants in 

Greek, 227 ; in Latin, 236 

sporadic substitutes in all 

dialects, 234 

changes of the aspirates in 

Latin, 241; when initial pass into 
breaths, 244 

soft letters instead of aspi- 
rates in Latin, 245 

Loss of, 248 



Consonants : loss of aspiration in 
Greek, 248 ; not frequent, 249 

languages generally do not 

tolerate heavy masses of consonants, 
250 ; what some philologists contend 
for in regard to all roots originally, ib. 

the loss in consonant 

groups considered under three heads : 
(i) Initial loss of s and v in Greek 

and Latin, 251 ; further loss in 
Latin, 253 

(ii) Medial loss hardly found in 
Greek, 255; common in Latin, 
ib.; examples from Schleicher, 
ib. 

(iii) Final loss, 256 ; caused by ten- 
dency to throw the accent back, 
ib. 

Consonantal terminations 

in Greek monotonous, 257; some- 
times all dropped, 258 ; the v i<pe\- 
KvariKov, ib. 

In Latin no such dislike 

to the accumulation of consonants, 
259; but in old Latin final conso- 
nants were regularly dropped, ib.; 
instances of the loss of the final s, 
m, t, 259—261 

Consonantal groups, probable origin of, 
250; the attempt to resolve them 
not always safe, ib. 

at the beginning of 

a word not objectionable to a Greek, 
252; Latins disliked initial sr, sn, 
sm, ib. 

when initial dis- 
placed in Latin, 254 

terminations, rule for in 

Latin, 259 

change, phonetic not dy- 

Assimilation, 262 

The Greek aspirates, 262 ; 

their pronunciation, 263 ; probably 
not sounded as spirants, ib.; Prof. 
Arendt's views, ib.; Curtius argues 
that x< &> <P were real aspirates, ib.; 
argument drawn from Latin trans- 
literation, ib. 

assimilation in Greek, ge- 
neral rules of, 266; complete, ib.; 
(i) of the first sound, 267; (ii) of the 
second, ib.; (iii) modification of both 
sounds, 268; Pott's views, ib.; other 
explanations, 209; no such change 
of a labial, 270; of a soft guttural 
or dental, 271 ; incomplete, 272; (i) 
"Euphonic" changes, ib.; (ii)chm 



namic, 35 



3i6 



INDEX. 



caused by nasals, ib.; (iii) changes 
of nasals, ib.; (iv) change of t to a, 
ib. ; (v) Laconian change of 6 to a, 
273; (vi) change of v, ib.; (vii) other 
exceptional forms, ib. 
Consonantal Assimilation in Latin, ge- 
neral rules of, 275 

i. Complete, 275 ; (i) assi- 
milation of the first letter, ib. ; (ii) of 
the second letter, ib.; (iii) modifica- 
tion of both sounds, ib. 

ii. Incomplete, 276; (i) 

"Euphonic" changes, ib.; (ii) changes 
caused by nasals, ib.; (iii) change of 
t to s, ib.; assibilation a late change, 
277 ; inscriptions our best guide, ib. 

Dissimilation, 279 

' (i) change of a dental, 

279 ; (ii) loss of aspiration in Greek , and 
of initial reduplicated consonants, 
ib.; (iii) Latin -am and -alls, 280 

consulo, 186 

contio, co-uentio, 199, 277 

cubui, crepui, loss of the a, 194, 203 

cum and quoin, 188 

cunctus, coiunctus, 198 

curculio and gurgulio, 223 

Curtius, Prof. Ernst, affirms that Aeo- 
lic is not a dialect like the Doric and 
Ionic, 126 n.; in what sense this may 
be admitted, ib. 

cutis and cr/cuYos, 253 



D Indo-European, 50 

D, how pronounced in Latin, 226 

D becomes b, 292 

D passes into I in Latin, 226 

D passes into r in Latin, 227 

Aav = £7}va, 272 

diaro {Od. vi. 242), 52 

dix-oficii, 249, 300 

dederimus and dederimus, 204 

dederi, dedrot, dederunt, 168, 261 

dederunt, dedi-sont, 182 

8et.5i(r<jofxai, 101 

Deis, dis, not Diis, 189 

Ar//j.i]Tr)p, 272 

Dentalism, 290 

dios, gddeiaei', scanning of, in Homer, 
299 

dextera, how scanned, 207 

DH and BH represented in Italy by /, 
rudhra, rufru, rubro, 243 

DH Indo-European, 61 

Dialects, their origin, 125 
claims of Aeolic to stand be- 
sides Doric and Aeolic, 126 



Dialects: view of Prof .Ernst Curtius, 126 
Digamma substituted for V, 232 ; 
wrongly written for y, 233; y sub- 
stituted for, ib.; wrongly supposed 
to be especially "Aeolic," ib. 
Diphthongs, tendency to become single 
sounds found in Homer, 141 

Greek, 139; AI = cu, et, oi; 

AU = au, ev, ov, ib. 

originally double sounds, 

139 ; change of dissimilar diphthongs 
in Greek, 140 ; illustrated, 141 

tendency to drop the second 

vowel, 141 ; forms quoted by Ahrens, 
ib. ; change of sound in Attica, 142 

at, et, 142; oi, av, ov, 143; 

ev, 144 



with first vowel long (a, rj, 
oi), at, 771, &n became monophthongs, 
144; similar diphthongs, ib.; six pos- 
sible combinations of similar vowels, 
145 ; exemplified in the Attic, Doric, 
and Aeolic dialects, 146 — 149 

Latin, ai passed into ae, 

149 ; retained longest in radical syl- 
lables, ib.; ae found in legal notices, 
150; pronounced by countrymen as 
e, ib.; weakened to ?, ib. 

ei found early as i, 

pronounced by countrymen as e, 151; 
Quintilian's dictum, ib.; weakened 
from ai and oi, 152 

oi passed into oe, 

153, and into u, ib.; into i.and e, 154 

au sometimes be- 
came 0, but generally retained, 154 ; 
sometimes produced wrongly out of 
0, 155 ; becomes and u in composi- 
tion, ib. 

eu became u, 156 

■ ou became u, 156 

table of the proba- 
ble sounds, 157 

diurnus, 167 

dixti, 197, 203 

domitum, 185 

56/j.os, domus, 53 

Donaldson, Dr, law of divergent arti- 
culations, 13 

Doric changes a + e to r] in contraction 
of suffixes, and a + to a : this change 
also Aeolic, 146; e + o to eu, 147; 
-h e to w, ib. ; change of severe Do- 
ric, 148 

dopKcis, fopKcis, and t'o/)/ces, 298 

(Indium, &c, 292 

Dynamic change, 3 

■ its nature, 91 



INDEX. 



317 



E, commonly found before two con- 
sonants, as ascendo, 167, 171 

eavos, 79, 230 

exe^ev and ^x°l xev i 136 

e X Ms, 304 

idu5rj y 109 

^ya>, uncertain whether the 7 is from 
GH, 218 

tiK'Jov, toitca for yeyoiKa, 298 

«£u, different forms, 148 

€Lir6[X7JV, 193 

eXaxvs and e\acf>p6<;, 289 

£a>s, t^ws, atfws, 78 

ecppdyrjv, but (ppdaaw, and farc-io, 222 

Epitaph of Claudia, 156 

Felicitaa, 200 

Epitaphs of the Scipios, variations of 

spelling upon, 151 
equester for equit-tero, 279 
Eranian language, 19 
ipyov, fepyov, (34pyov, 234 
ipladev, epiadrju, epiadep.ev, 148 
ero, es-yo, 237 
ftnrere, 286 
Essay on the Results of Comparative 

Philology and Classical Scholarship, 5 
ecrdXaTai, 255 
ftrreXXa, 268 
euntem, 190 
etTpos, 78 
&fe, ev, 77, 230 
exta, 75, 197 



F, history of, in Latin, 240 ; a labio- 
dental, 241 

fari, Gr. <pd-vai, 241 

Farrar, Mr, connection between sense 
and form in roots, 27 

faxim, fctxo, 197 

feci from fcfaci, 175 

femina, 62 

ferbui, 235 

fcstiis, 25 

/«Ze7 and jfo&ei, 203 

filim, 62 

firmu8, 241 

t //.s'.s^s for Jul -tii s, 276 

flamrna ioxfiag-ma, 275 

flavus and fulvus, 181 

Formiae, &c, 241 

formido, 241 

/o.s7/.s and hostis, 212 

/ruor torfruguor, 288 

Future suffix, -*yo, 229 



G Indo-European, 47 



G becomes /3 and 6, 288 ; becomes 5, 

292 
yap,3pos, gener, 309 
yapyapii'eiv, 101 
gau(i)deo, 204 
777, 7a?a, ala, 272 
yey ova saadjajdna, 136 
Genitive in as, 149 
German modified vowels, 187 
GH, Indo-European, 60 
GH becomes a in Latin when initial, if 

followed by r, 244 ; represented by g 

when not initial, 244 
GH becomes <p, 289; becomes d, 292 
GZorta, 223 
Graeco-Italian vowels, how pronounced, 

128 
Greek alphabet, how enriched, 128 

= p'7i, 15, 263 

pronunciation of, not to be judged 

from modern Greek, 143 

words borrowed by the Latin, 14 

Grimm's Law, 218 

GU, how produced in Latin, 288 
Guna and Vriddhi, terms rejected by 

later philologists, 110 n. 
Guttural nasal, 31 



H, history in Greece, 231 ; wrongly in- 
serted, ib. 

H, parasitic in Greek, 299 ; caused by 
a liquid, or nasal, or sibilant, 300 

H, not inserted wrongly in Latin, till 
of late, 303 

haruspex not aruspex, 303 

herba and (popj3rj, 213 

Heyse's (Prof.), character of e may be 
assented to, 183 ; of the other vowels 
doubtful, ib. & 11. 

hie nips, x'-ow, 214 

Hindu belief in immortality, 105 

Hindus, their mixture with an earlier 
race, 21 

r)p.eh, -why aspirated, 302 

"Home," 38 

// mullus, 181, 195 

hornu8, ho-iornus, 198 

hospeSf 244 

J/Dstis, our "guest," 244 

ijcracji/, ijKtaTa, 270 



I, apparent influence of, in assimila- 
tion, 187 

I, common vowel before su (fixes, as 
publicity, 169*; weakened from e us 
rubicundus, ib. 



3i8 



INDEX. 



284 



ISetv and fidelv, 232 
lepos, 302 
illec-ebrae, 186 
Indo-European alphabet, 31 

apa, diro, ab, 45 

Eoots, some of our 

words possibly older, 66 

katvar, "four /Wirrapes, 

quattuor, 39 

ha, "who," ko, quo, 39, 

people, 17 
■ peoples, their degrees 

of relationship, 20 

terms for relationships, 

66, 69 

winter, probably severe, 

69 

indu-itiae, 199 

infringo, why i does not sink to e, 171 

insece, 286 

'iinros, weakening of a to c, 160 ; change 

of K to 7T, 234 
liriro}, 148 

ipsius, illius, the genetive forms, 190 
Irrational vowels, 206 
ita, 211 

iubeo, ius-hibeo, 199 
iurgium, 190, 196, 204 
iugfct, 75, 197 



K Indo-European, 37 

K lost in Latin, except as an abbre- 
viation, 223 

K becomes 7r and p, 283 ; becomes r, 
290 

K does not pass into p in Latin, though 
in Italian, 286 

/cdXo's and /caXo?, 296 n. 

Kam, com, aw, 161 

Keltic, its relationship to the Italian, 
19 ' 

Kevos, Keveos, 229; k£wos, 267 

Key, Prof., on the "German School of 
Linguistic Science," 48 

"Kin," 24 

k\ol£(2, 230 

I^VjLLT], 38 

Kwovpca, 251 



L perhaps Indo-European, 81; how 
pronounced in Latin, 180 ; sometimes 
doubled, ib. 

L substituted for d in Latin, 226 

Labialism, 283 

lacrima, 15, 226 



XaiXaf, 102 

Latinised Greek words, 14, 15 

latus for tlatus, 254; latus = 7r\aTos, ib. 

lautus and lotus, 154 

Xeyrjv, Xeyeiv, 148 

Letters of the Greek and Latin alpha- 
bets, later, not Indo-European, 127 

leuir, harjp, 226 

Liquids, 81; E is the older sound, ib. 

Loss of reduplicated syllable in Latin 
perfects, 174 

lu(c)na, 256 

lupus, 253, 286 

Lyra, Xvpa, 14 

M Indo-European, 70 

M final, omitted in Latin, 260 

Madhu, [xedv, 64 

mage for magis, 260 

magis, 184 

fidXevpop, 235 

p,d\\o$, uillus, 236 

man(u)suetus, 199 

mare, 240 

yweX-e and p.eWu, 307 

(xe\8op-ai, %\8op.cu, 236 

p,ep,{fi)\<jOKa, 310 

meridies, 227 

meritus, meretus, 185 

p,ear]/j-(j3)pia, 310 

Me0-<rd7rioi, Me<ro7rora,itt'a, Me0i55/noi>, 

284 
plpvw, 108 
wuwa for /xfa, 309 
minus, 184 
moneo, 116 
moor, 196 



N Indo-European, 68 ; how pronounced 

in Latin, 184 
N not clearly heard before s in Latin, 

255 
Nabhas, vecpos, nubes, 65 
Nasals, 67; the guttural nasal, ib. 
Nasalisation, 193 
veirodes, dvty-ios, nepotes, 224 
neptis, loss of o, 194 
neu, 214 
Niebukr's hypothesis of a Greek and 

non-Greek Element in Latin, 14 
nuncupo, 199 
nuntius, noui-uentiw, 199, 277 



O before / sinks to u 180 ; sometimes 
prevented, 186 



INDEX. 



319 



final, gradual shortening of, 212 
weakened to u in Latin formative 

syllables, 165 
obicit, how scanned, 189 11. 
ocellus, 195 
65yU77 and 607x77, 272 
88-w8a, 117, 135 
6-dous, 306 
oinos, units, 119 

oenus, iinus, 153 

'6kvos, perhaps connected with cunctor, 

280 
ukv, Latin, uci-us, the length of the 

vowel original, 138 
olere and odor, 226 
'OXv/xttos, 306 
fyi/za and 67T7ra, 267 
dfxvdadrjv, dvap.v7)<rdr)vai, 131 
6tt0-?7, 300 
8-uo/xa, 48, 305 
60pus, 48 

b-K-KOTo., history of the form, 207 
dpeyw, rego, 306 
dpos, 84 
opos, 84 
0-tXos, 305 
ws, 76, 229 



P, Indo-European, 44; becomes p and 
b, 225 

P, weakening of to p, as Boblicola for 
Poplicola, 108 

P inserted in Latin, 10, 310 

7ra%us, 301 

Palatals, 7, 290 

palumbes and columba, 286 

Trap.(paLvi0, 101 

Papirius and Papisius, 239 

Parasitic sounds, 12, 281 

Parilia and Palilia, 280 

partem and partim, 168 

waTfj/s. loss of the e in the suffix, 193 

pauper, pauriprr, 199 

pedester, 182 

pcnua for pet-na, 275 

penuria and o-7ram, 253 

perfacilis and difficilw, 173, 186 

irepippvTos, the double p caused by assi- 
milation, 267 

perplaert and dinplicet, 173, 186 

wtaaw, iriiruv, from IIAK, 270 

petorritum, 286 

Petronius and l J etrcius-=(j)t<ir!u*, 286 

(paevvos for <po.ee -vos, 267 

<Pvyos,fa(jus, discussed by Max Midler, 
49 

Phonetic change, its nature, 1 



Phonetic change, its cause, 3 

gain of the Greek 

from, 6 



apparent exceptions 

to the principle of, 9 

Prof. Max Miiller's 

theory, 11 

due to two causes, 

123 

general results of, in 

Greek and Latin, 127 

Phonetic varieties applied for dynamic 
purposes in Greek, 115 ; traces of 
the same method in Latin, 116 

<p0p£0L(Tl, 148 

<ppd8Sw, Boeotian = 0/jd^w, 271 

pi(c)nus, 256 

pietas, why the e does not sink to i, 
189 

trie^u) for eirl + efa, 46 

iriwTU), 108 

piscis, its derivation, 46 

plaustrum and j)lost rum, 155 

Plautus, different theories of his scan- 
ning, 207 

his transliteration of z by s 

or ss, 15 

7t\tj<tlos for ifhaT-yo s, 273 

7rAot;<xios for ttXovt-jjo-s, 273 

"Poetical license," in what sense the 
term admissible, 195 

iroios, irodev, 91, 284 

TT01WVV03, 101 

ttoXvs, iroXXos, 268 

Pompeius and Pontius = Quintus, 286 

popina and coquina, 91, 286 

p08tU8, repostus, 196 

Pott, his theory of secondary roots, 

42, 45 
praestolor, 43 
praesto, 197 
prohibes8i8, 198 

irpvravls, 161 
tttSXcs and ?rd\is, 274 
pulcher, 16 
7ri'/u.aros, 161 



Q, history of, 288 

QU occurs beside C in Latin, 285 ; cor- 
responds to 7T in Greek, 285 
Quantity of vowels, natural 1< 
200 re.; shortened by accent, 202 

vowels lengthened 

in Augustan po< fry, 209 

variation of, in Greek and 

Latin, 296 u. 



320 



INDEX. 



que, 211 

querella, 16, 180 
quin, 214 
quot, 114 



E Indo-European, 81 

E substituted for d in Latin, 227 

pa-xia, 301 

pa/cos from BHBAG, 252 

raptim, 169 

Reate for Sreuate, 252 

Eeduplicated consonant, loss of, in 

Greek, 279 
Eeduplication, use of the vowels in 
Greek for the reduplicated syllable, 
137 

the oldest and simplest 

method of formation, 95 ; evidences 
of this derived from the language of 
savages and children, ib. ; general 
traces of the principle, 97 ; in imita- 
tive words and in alliteration, ib.; 
in superlatives, 100; in intensives, 
101 

. to distinguish protracted 

from momentary action, 103; table 
illustrating this, 104 
pijy-pu-fju, tppwya, 117 
Eelaxed articulation, instances in Eng- 
lish of, 12 
jttfa for F/offa, 251 
Roma for Srouma according to Cors- 

sen, 252 
Eomance languages not derived from 

Classical Latin, 166 
Eoot, its definition, 26—28 
Eenan's view, 28 
Prof. Curtius' definition, 28 
AK, d'/caw, acuo, 37 ; never EK or 

OK, 133 
AAO, dXdaivca, 249 
AN, dVe/ios, TTpoa-yjv-'qs, 68 
AE, dpooj, arare, 82 
AEBH, dXcpeiv, labor, 65 
AS, tJmcu, 303, 305 
AS, ES, tan, est, 76; e/i/u, 267 
BHA, and BHAN, <pap.l, <palvw, 

fari, 41 
BHAB, 0e>w, fero, 4 

<t>6pos, ferax, fors, 65 

BOA, (3o\-yo-/j.cu, (36XXop.ai, fiovXo- 

fjuu, 135 
BHU, 0rfw, fui, 34 
XT, X evu, 121 
DHA, dijadou, felo, 61 



Eoot, DHU, Ovew, dvp,6s, dveXXa, fumus, 

63 
AT, i88eL<rev, 299 
DIV, At(F)os, 50, 51; DYTJ, Zeus, 

Ayevs, 293 
DEAK, Spat<€?v, dpaKwv, 52 
EA (=BP), EAG, EATQ, ijXvOov, 

i\ev(d)(TOfJLai, elXijXovda, 121, 307 

■ iTrr)\v5-, 249 

ER, eperfios, remus, 82 

FID, fides, feidus, foidus, 119 

GA, GAN, and GNA, 7e7aa, ytvos, 

yiyvuxrKu, genus, gnarus, 47 
GAE, "to call," "to waken," "to 

be old," 29 
GAE, j3op-d, 29, 288 
GHAE, x a ' i P eiv i I ja *- gratus, 60 
GNO, the old by-form of GNA, 

138 
I, Lat. eire (ire), 119; alwv, Lat. 

aevum, 121 
LDH, aWu, aWos, aldijp, Lat. aed- 

es, aestus, aes-tas, 120 
IK=AIK, eiK(a>, eoiKa, 'fceXos, 298 
KI, KetpLat, quies, 38, 284 

— Keifiai, Koirrj, Koipidw, 118 
LABH, Xafieiv and Xdcpvcov, 249 
LAS, Xct-w, Xr}p.a, Xi-Xa-/-o/icu, 85 
LIGH, Xet'xw, ligurio, 244 
AIII, eXiwov, Xeiiroj, XeXonra, 118 
LUK, Xevao-eip, lumen, 53 

MA, p.ip,£op.a.L unitor, 102 
MAX, p.axe, i-pi.axe-crdpLr)i>, 307 
MAN, piev-etv, p.evos, pLaivopiai, men- 

tio, moneo, 71 
MAE, MAED, MAEP, a-fx(P)po- 

tos, 70 ; p,ap,ualpa), 101 
NAK, Indo-Eur., Lat. nex, necis, 

117 
OK, 6aae, Hesych. Skkos, Lat. 

oculus, 271 
OE, opcopa, orior, 83 
PA, iraTTjp, 7roViS, potis, 44 

— ghas-pati, Lat. Jiospes, 244 
PAK, not PAG, paciscor, Gr. 7raV- 

craXos, 223 
PAE, IIAA orllAE, Lat. PLE, tto- 

Xis, Lat. _p?c-fts, 274 
— — Trepdu, wopos, wnrpdcrKU), por- 

tus, periculum, 4-1 
$Tr, £<pvyou, <pevyu), rricpevya, 121 
IIIO, Tnd-avo, 7n6au6s, iridavoTws, 

iridavoo), 92 
tiridov, irddw the verb, 7ret0u> 

the noun, irtiroiQa, 118 
IIAAK, 7rXct£ and xrXa/coOs, 7rX^<r- 

<xu>, 270 



INDEX. 



321 



Boot, ITPAK, irpanos, -rrpdacw, 270 

nTAK, TTT-qaffu, 270 

PT, pew, IIXT, irvew, irveviia and 
pev/xa, 121 

SAP, ao<p6s, <ra<p-7)S, sapio, 300 

SAE, d\s, sal, 85; possible connec- 
tion with SEU, 250 

2EB, aeix-vos, 272 

2 FAIL vir-vos, 272 

SIV, Kaaavcj= Kara-<Tv-co, suo, 77 

SKEII, oKoireiv, gkottos, 52 

SKID, axtfa, Lat. scindo, 300 

SKU, SKAD, caelum, casa, 253 

SMAB, fiep/uLTipi^eiv, memor, 101 

SNIGH, H0-eu>, 289 

vHpds, snow, 69 

SVAK, so^or, 253 

SPU, TTVTifa, spuere, 253 

SEU, probably not the simplest 
form, 250 

STA, GTdcns, tarrifii, stare, 27, 42 

adi-vo, 300 

STAL, o-TtWu, praestolor, 43 

STAMBH, aritx4>v\ov, 43 

STAP, «^ fl r«, 43 

STAE, d-at'/jp, darpdirTw, darpaTrri, 
305 

STAV, aravpos, 43 

2TIX, (Trixes, CTeixw, (XTQLXOS, 118 

2T, <revw, 121 

SVAD, r/Si^s, sua(d)uis, 114 

SVAN and SVAP, Indo-Eur., Lat. 
sdn-u-s, sopi-o, gop-or, 117 

TA and TAN, rdais, rdvaos, reivw, 
tendo, 40 



TAK or TUK, reiceiv, 
43 



to^ov, Tvxew, 



GAF, Odcrai, davpa, 02 
GE2, d4<r<ravro,festus, 25 
UG, vynjs, av'^dvw, auyeo, 122 
US, etfa>, auw, avos, avxp-ds, uro, 

11 
VAGH, (F)EX, GO 
VAE, opdoj, uereor, 83 
VAS, ves-tis, [eadrjs, 79 
VER, uerbum, epelv, 84 
VID, iheiv, 52 
VOE, opa^, wpa, uereor, 52 
VEAK, pa/cos, Lat. radix; the old- 
est form BHEAG, p/j^ts, 252 
ST, £<ta; also ^davo/' by a second 

step, 121 
YUG, £vyov, iufjum, 75, 293 
Roots, belong to all languages, 29 
Greek with two aspirates, 279 
must not be analysed too far, 29 
secondary, formed from primary by 
addition of a consonant, 40— 42 



Eoots, secondary, formed by a muti- 
lated preposition, 45 
secondary, formed by addition of 

a final vowel, 47 
specialisation of, 50, 52 
that differ in meaning may have 
the same form, 85 
ros, tyo-n, 253 

rufus, ruber, and e-pvd-pos, 242 
rumpo, 86 



S Indo-Eur., 76 

S changes in Greek, 230; lost at be- 
ginning of a word, 232 ; between two 
vowels, ib. 

S changes in Latin, strong when initial, 
but weak when final, 237 ; becomes r 
between two vowels and when final, 
238; is lost, 239; lost before d in 
Latin, 256 ; final, omitted in Latin, 
260; after I passes into I, 215 ; passes 
into r after r, 275 

S retained in nominative plural of 
o-declension in Plautus, 260 

Samnium for Sab{i)nium, 276 

Sanskrit, its age, 19, 20 

its place in philology, 23 

ch, j and e, 1 

aacpijs, crocpos, 300 

Scanning in the 4th century after 
Christ, 200 

apparent irregularities of, in 

Plautus, &c, 206, 208 

Sclavonic, its history, 20 

secuntur and sequontur, 188 

sed, originally long, 211 

sella, for sed-la, 275 

silua, 15 

sim, siem, 185 

sin, 214 

<rtds for 0e6s, 273 

socer, 253 

scrofa, 242 

sinciput = semi-caput, 199 

somnus for sop-uus, 276 

sopor, 253 

<r0^, sva, 273 

Spirants, 73; only three Indo-Euro- 
pean, ib. 

Sporadic change, 124; in Greek vow- 
els, 159 

snusa, vvos, nurus, 69, 251 

"Star," 23 

Stella, stilla, 195 

are v/xai, 43 

(TTTJp.UV, 42 

Stlatus, 253; nauis stlata, ib. 



21 



322 



INDEX. 



stlocus, locus, 180 

Subjunctive present, old form of, in 

Latin, 185 
Suffixes, Indo-European, composition 
of, 72, 87 

not formed to denote special 

logical meanings, 104 
Suffix, case, a, 212 
-bin, 87 

bus, 210 

entirely lost, 213 

formative, -ad, -id, 297 

-aris or -alls, 280 

-asio, -esio, -usio, 278 

-afr>, 294 

-aw, -ew, -oca, 137 

-dios, 295 

-5eos, 295 

-dum, -dem, -do, 296 

.§ 0J/} -8r)v, -5a, 296 

-tfa, 295 

-fta, 86 

-mant, 73 

-oso, 81 

-sco, 103, 105 

-o-0-w and -rrio, 268 

-s?/o, 229 

-tar, 66 

frima, (xvvrj, 273 

-yant, 76 

inflectional, -mas, -/*es, -mws,2 

ui for /wi, 194 

<svv and £uV, 251 

Superlatives, Latin, instances of assi- 
milation, 275 
sus. us, 15 



0eo's, not from same root as deus, 25 

OeaaavTo (Pind. Nem. v. 10), 25 

"Thorney", 293 n 

"Thunder", 40, 253, 310 

rts, 291 

tonitru, derivation of, 40, 253 

tot, 214 

rpoTTJ, rpoiraiov, 113 

tug-urium, 186 



XJ, regular weakening in Greek, 158 ; 

weakened to i, 161 ; denoted by ov, in 

Boeotian, 158 
U, its affinity for labials, as insulto, 171; 

before nt, nd, &c. especially in legal 

formulae, 167 
U found in classical Latin where o was 

retained in the provincial, 182 
ua(c)nus, 256 
uariegare, why the e does not sink to 

i, 190 
ubi, for cubi, 254 
vfipis and virip, 225 
uel, 213 

uenire, 254, 288 
uella and uilla, 151 
uermis, 254 
wmia, 77, 238 

uictrix, loss of o, 194, 201, 203 
uinculum, 194, 201 
ufo's, 69, 228 
uix, 196 
uyuets-, 229 

umor not humor, 303 
VTrepcplaXos 161 
vup.lvr], 229 



T Indo-European, 40 ; becomes 5, 224 
T final, interchanges with d, 225 
dropped in Latin, 261; in abla- 
tives and personal terminations, ib.; 
passes into s in Latin participles, 
276 ; and elsewhere, 277 
tarpessita (TpcnrefiTrjs), 15 
tendo, derivation of, by Pott, 42 
r£<p-pa., tep-eo, 300 
Ttocrapes, 291 
T€Tpdira\ai, a sort of reduplication, 100; 

revx^ 249, 300 
Teutonic language, how subdivided, 20 
TH, change of to a in Laconian, 273 
th, passes into r in Greek forma- 
tions, 279 
Theokritus, as an authority for dialec- 
tical forms, 141 

. reading in xxviii. 4, 268 n. 



V Indo-European, 78 

V preserved as F in Greek, 232; be- 
comes v, 233; becomes rough breath- 
ing, 234 ; becomes /3, ib.; becomes 
At, 235 

V becomes u in Latin, 239 ; is lost, 
239 ; does not become m, 240 

Valesium and Valentium, 278 

Visa, tos, virus, 80 

Vowels a, e, i, o, u, why not the scale 

of strength for all languages, 178, 

179 n 
Vowel-assimilation, principle of, 178 ; 

where the process has been stemmed, 

and where altered by neighbouring 

sounds, 179 
caused by vowels, 



INDEX. 



323 



185 ; when two vowels come into 
actual contact, 185 ; when two vowels 
are separated by a consonant, 186 

Vowel-assimilation, caused by conso- 
nants, 179 ; the vowel u produced 
by labials and I, ib. ; the vowel e 
attracted by r and before two conso- 
nants, 182 ; the vowel i attracted to 
n, 183; and dentals, 184 

Vowel-degradation, (Latin) table of, 163 

Dissimilation, 187 ; less fre- 
quent in its operation — a bar to 
further change, 188 ; examples of 
this bar, 188, 9; further illustra- 
tions, 189, 190 

Vowels express relativity, 35 

Greek, how represented in 

Latin, 164, 169, 170, 181 

Vowel-loss, Greek, 190 ; how probably 
produced, ib. 

sometimes lost in the 

formative suffixes, 193 

£-<j(e)x-ov, loss of the 

e, 193 

Latin, loss of, 193 

a, 194 

0, examples, 194 

v, only lost be- 

e, lost before r, 

i, the most im- 
portant loss ; instances from classi- 
cal writers, 196 ; this vowel especi- 
ally lost in compounds, 198 ; dis- 
cussed, ib. 

the immediate cause of 

this vowel-loss discussed, 199; the 
results of Corssen's inquiry precari- 
ous, 199; loss in unaccented syl- 



fore I, 194 



195 



lables, 201 



the lost vowels fell out 
not abruptly, 206 and 11. 

the corruption and loss 

of vowels traced, 207 

cause of the loss of the 

final syllable, 208 

loss in quantity, 209; 

loss of quantity owing to the loss of 
the final consonant, 210 ; loss of 
quantity in originally final vowels, 
212; loss of letters in the final 
syllable, 213 ; final i and e lost, 214 

Vowel-increase, quantitative, in Latin, 
more rarely in Greek, 117 

generally qualitative, 

not quantitative, 33 — 35 

Vowel Intensification, 109 ; different 



in different languages, ib.; most re- 
cognisable in Sanskrit, 110 

Vowels, long, in the Greek, advantage 
of the different symbols for, 117 

Vowel-scales ; the A-scale, 113 ; the 
I-scale, 118 ; I intensified to ai, 119 ; 
the U-scale, 121 ; U intensified to 
au, 122 

use of, in Sanskrit, 110 

important uses of, 110 ; in 

the Gothic, 112 ; and in the Lithua- 
nian, 113 

in Greek and Latin, 113 

difficulty in distinguishing 

the two steps of the A-scale, 114 

different methods of dis- 
tinguishing the steps of the A-scale 
in Greek, 115 

Vowel-system, contrast between the 
Greek and the Latin, 163; examples 
from Corssen, 164 

(Greek) superior to the 

Latin, 215 

(Latin) peculiar weak- 
ness of, 162 

Vowels, weakness of, in formative syl- 
lables, 164; illustrative examples, 
164, 5 ; analogy in the Umbrian, 
pointed out by Corssen, 166; in 
final syllables the original vowel 
commonly sinks to e ; explained and 
illustrated, 167, 8 

weakened in composition, 169 ; 

the first member of the compound, 
ib.; where the second member is 
weakened, 170 ; examples, 170—172 ; 
exceptions, 172 

Latin weakened in reduplicated 

forms, 173 ; of the reduplicated syl- 
lable, ib. ; of the radical syllable, 
174 

Vowel-change, modified by external 
cause, 176 ; hardly at all in Greek, 
ib. ; but frequently in Latin, 177 ; 
results, ib. 

Vowel-variation, {A , c, 0), application of, 
134 ; exemplified, 134, 5 ; gain of 
the Greek language hereby, 135 

(a, e, 0) originally pho 

netic, 115 ; illustrated by Prof. 
Curtius, ib. n. 



Weak articulation, its character and 

tendency, 123—126 
Whitney, Professor, "The Study ol 

Language," 4 



■ 



324 



INDEX. 



Y Indo-European, 75 

Y, guttural sound of, in Greek, 230 ; 
early lost, 229 ; changed to £ by pa- 
rasitic 8, 292 

Y becomes i in Latin, 236; is lost, 237 
ya, 6's, 75 

Year, the divisions of, various names 
and their derivations, 89 



£, origin of, in Greek, 274 



Z, old Latin, 128, 239; afterwards bor- 
rowed, 15, 128; represented by s and 
ss in Plautus, 239 

Za for did, 293 ; as a prefix, 294 

ZdKvvdos, 293 

Zaw, 292 

Zend, the speech of the old Persians, 
19 

Zeus, 293 

fr/da, 294 

Zwfios and ius, 294 

Zvyov, 75, 293, 294 ; 8vyov, 295 



CAMBRIDGE : PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



16, Bedford Street, Covent Garden, London. 

January ; 1870. 

Macmlllan &■ Co:s General Catalogue 
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Lettres. With some short Account or 
Critical Notice concerning each Book. 

SECTION I. 

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, and TRAVELS. 

Baker (Sir Samuel W.).— THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF 

ABYSSINIA, and the Sword Hunters of the Hamran Arabs. 
By Sir Samuel W. Baker, M.A., F.R.G.S. With Portraits, 
Maps, and Illustrations. Third Edition, 8vo. 21s. 

Sir Samuel Baker here describes twelve months' 1 exploration, during 
which he examined the rivers that are tributary to the Nile from Abyssinia, 
including the Atbara, Settite, Royan, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Binder, 
and the Blue Nile. The interest attached to these portions of Africa differs 
entirely from that of the White Nile regions, as the whole of Upper Egypt 
and Abyssinia is capable of development, and is inhabited by races having 
some degree of civilization; while Central Africa is peopled by a race of 
savages, whose future is more problematical. 

THE ALBERT N'YANZA Great Basin of the Nile, and Explo- 
ration of the Nile Sources. New and cheaper Edition, with 
Portraits, Maps, and Illustrations. Two vols, crown 8vo. i6j. 

"Bruce won the source of the Blue Nile; Speke and Grant xuon the 
Victoria source of the great White Nile ; and L have been permitted to 
succeed in completing the Nile Sources by the discovery of the great 
reservoir of the equatorial waters, the Albert Nyanza, from which the 
river issues as the entire White Nile." — Preface. 

NEW AND CHEAP EDITION OF THE ALBERT N'YANZA. 
1 vol. crown 8vo. With Maps and Illustrations. Js. 6d. 
A 



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Baker (Sir Samuel W.) {continued)— 

CAST UP BY THE SEA; or, The Adventures of Ned Grey. 
By Sir Samuel W. Baker, M.A., F.R.G.S. Second Edition. 
Crown 8vo. cloth gilt, Js. 6d. 

" A story of adventure by sea and land in the good old style. It appears 
to us to be the best book of the kind since ' Masterman Ready, ' and it runs 
that established favourite very close. " — Pall Mall Gazette. 

" No book written for boys has for a long time created so much interest, 
or been so successful. Every parent ought to provide his boy with a copy." 

Daily Telegraph. 

Barker (Lady). — STATION LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND. 
By Lady Barker. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 

" These letters are the exact account of a lady's experience of the brighter 
and less practical side of colonization. They record the expeditions, ad- 
ventures, and emergencies diversifying the daily life of the wife of a Nezv 
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excitement of the scenes it describes were fresh upon her, they may succeed 
in giving here in England an adequate imprression of the delight and free- 
dom of an existence so far removed from our own highly -wrought civiliza- 
tion"'' — Preface. 

Baxter (R. Dudley, M.A.). — the taxation of the 
UNITED KINGDOM. By R. Dudley Baxteb, M.A. 8vo. 
cloth, 4-r. 6d. 

The First Part of this work, originally read before the Statistical 
Society of London, deals with the Amount of Taxation ; the Second Part, 
which now constitutes the mam portion of the work, is almost entirely new, 
and embraces the important questions of Rating, of the relative Taxation 
of Land, Personalty, a?td Industry, and of the direct effect of Taxes upon 
Prices. The author trusts that the body of facts here collected may be of 
permanent value as a record of the past progress and present condition of 
the population of the United Kingdom, inaependently of the transitory 
circumstances of its present Taxation. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. 3 

Baxter (R. Dudley, M.A.) {continued)— 

NATIONAL INCOME. With Coloured Diagrams. 8vo. 3* 6d. 

Part I. — Classification of the Poptdation, Upper, Aliddle, a?id Labour 
Classes. II. — Income of the United Kingdom. 

" A painstaking and certainly most interesting inquiry. " — Pall Mall 
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Bernard. — FOUR LECTURES ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
WITH DIPLOMACY. By Mountague Bernard, M.A., 
Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy, Oxford. 
8vo. gs. 

Four Lectures, dealing with (1) The Congress of Westphalia ; (2) Systems 
of . Policy ; (3) Diplomacy, Past and Present; (4) The Obligations of 
Treaties. 

Blake.— THE LIFE OF WILLIAM BLAKE, THE ARTIST. 

By Alexander Gilchrist. With numerous Illustrations from 
Blake's designs, and Fac-similes of his studies of the " Book of 
Job." Two vols, medium 8vo. 32J. 

These volumes contain a Life of Blake ; Selections from his Writings, 
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List, with occasional notes, of Blake's Engravings and Writings. There 
are appended Engraved Designs by Blake ; (1) The Book of Job, twenty- 
one plwto -lithographs from the originals; (2) Songs of Innocence and 
Experience, sixteen of the original Plates. 

Bright (John, M. P.).— SPEECHES ON QUESTIONS OF 
PUBLIC POLICY. By John Bright, M. P. Edited by 
Professor Thorold Rogers. Two Vols. 8vo. 25^. Second 
Edition, with Portrait. 

" / have divided the Speeches contained in these volumes into groups. 
The materials for selection are so abundant, that I have been constrained 
to omit fnany a speech which is worthy of careful perusal. I have 

A 2 



GENERAL CATALOGUE. 



naturally given prominence to those subjects zvith which Mr. Bright has 
been especially identified, as, for example, India, America, Ireland, and 
Parliamentary Reform. But nearly every topic of great public interest on 
-which Mr. Bright has spoken is represented in these volumes." 

Editor's Preface. 

AUTHOR'S POPULAR EDITION. Extra fcap. 8vo. cloth. Second 
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Bryce.— THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By James Bryce, 
B.C.L., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. [Reprinting. 

CAMBRIDGE CHARACTERISTICS. See Mullinger. 

CHATTERTON : A Biographical Study. By Daniel Wilson, 
LL.D., Professor of History and English in University College, 
Toronto. Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 

The Author here regards Chatterton as a Poet, not as a mere " resetter 
and defacer of stolen literary treasures." Reviewed in this light, he has 
found much in the old materials capable of being turned to new account ; 
and to these materials research in various directions has enabled him to 
?nake some additions. 



Clay .—THE PRISON CHAPLAIN. A Memoir of the Rev. John 
Clay, B.D., late Chaplain of the Preston Gaol. With Selections 
from his Reports and Correspondence, and a Sketch of Prison 
Discipline in England. By his Son, the Rev. W. L. Clay, M.A. 
8vo. 1 5 s. 

" Few books have appeared of late years better entitled to an attentive 
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attempted by various philanthropists for the amelioration of the condition and 
the improvement of the morals of the criminal classes in the British 
dominions. " — London Revif.w. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &* TRAVELS. 5 

Cooper.— ATHENE CANTABRIGIENSES. By Charles 
Henry Cooper, F.S.A., and Thompson Cooper, F.S.A. 
Vol. T. 8vo., 1500—85, i8j. Vol. II., 1586— 1609, i8f. 

This elaborate work, which is dedicated by permission to Lord Macau-lay, 
contains lives of the eminent men sent forth by Cambridge, after the 
fashion of Anthony a Wood, in his famous "Athena Oxonie/ises." 

Dilke. — GREATER BRITAIN. A Record of Travel in English- 
speaking Countries during 1866-7. (America, Australia, India.) 
By Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, M.P. Fourth and Cheap 
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" Mr. Dilke has written a book which is probably as well worth reading 
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highly intelligent observer, that it stimulates the imagination as well as the 
judgment of the reader, and that it is on perhaps the most interesting 
subject that can attract an Englishman who cares about his country. " 

Saturday Review. 



Durer (Albrecht).— HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF AL- 

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pany, Limited; the rest are Photographs and Woodcuts. 

EARLY EGYPTIAN HISTORY FOR THE YOUNG. See 
"Juvenile Section." 



GENERAL CATALOGUE. 



Elliott. — LIFE OF HENRY VENN ELLIOTT, of Brighton. 
By Josiah Bateman, M.A., Author of "Life of Daniel Wilson, 
Bishop of Calcutta," &c. With Portrait, engraved by Jeens. 
Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d. Second Edition, with Appendix. 

" A very charming piece of religious biography ; no one can read it 
without both pleasure and profit^ — British Quarterly Review. 

Forbes.— LIFE OF PROFESSOR EDWARD FORBES, 
F.R.S. By George Wilson, M.D., F.R.S.E., and Archibald 
Geikie, F. R. S. 8vo. with Portrait, 14J. 

"From the first page to the last the book claims careful reading, as being 
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picture of a mind that was rare in strength and beauty." — EXAMINER. 

Freeman. — history of federal government, 

from the Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of 
the United States. By Edward A. Freeman, M.A. Vol. I. 
General Introduction. History of the Greek Federations. 8vo. 



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importance. It is also a task of an almost entirely novel character. No 
other work professing to give the history of a political principle occurs fo 
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history of the development of a principle is at least as important as the 
history of a dynasty, or of a race.'' — Saturday Review. 

OLD ENGLISH HISTORY FOR CHILDREN. By Edward A. 
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Five Coloured Maps. Extra fcap. 8vo., half-bound. 6s. 

" Its object is to show that clear, accurate, and scientific views of history, 
or indeed of any subject, may be easily given to children from the veiy 
first. . . I have, I hope, shown that it is perfectly easy to teach childreu,from 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 7 

the very first, to distinguish true history alike from legend and from wilful 
inventioi}, and also to understand the nature of historical authorities, and 
to weigh one statement against another. .... I have throughout striven to 
connect the history of England with the general histo?y of civilized Europe, 
and I have especially tried to make the book serve as an i7icentive to a ?nore 
accurate study of historical geography." — Preface. 

French (George Russell). — shakspeareana 

GENEALOGICA. 8vo. cloth extra, 15^. Uniform with the 
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Part I. — Identification of the dramatis persona? in the historical plays, 
from King John to King Henry VIII. ; Notes on Characters hi Macbeth 
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Tables of descent. The present is the first attempt to give a detailed de- 
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it is believed, hej'ein identified for the first time. A clue is furnished which, 
followed up with ordinary diligence, may enable any one, with a taste for 
the pursuit, to trace a distinguished Shakspearean worthy to his lineal 
representative in the present day. 

Galileo.— THE PRIVATE LIFE OF GALILEO. Compiled 
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Galileo, his friends, and his judges to speak for themselves as far as possible. 

Gladstone (Right. Hon. W. E., M.P.).— JUVENTUS 

MUNDI. The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age. Crown 8vo. 
cloth extra. With Map. 10s. 6d. Second Edition. 

This new work of Mr. Gladstone deals especially with the historic 
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in Hellas, including the influence of the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It 
co?itains chapters on the Olympian system, with its several deities ; on the 
Ethics and the Polity of the Heroic age ; on the geography of Homer ; on 
the characters of the Poems ; presenting, in fine, a vir<y of primitive life 
and primitive society as found in the poems of Homer. 



"GLOBE" ATLAS OF EUROPE. Uniform in size with Mac- 
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countries to each other is defined in a general Key-map. All the maps 
being on a uniform scale facilitates the comparison of extent and distance, 
and conveys a just impression of the relative magnitude of different countries. 
The size suffices to show the provincial divisions, the railways and main 
roads, the principal rivers and mountain ranges. "This atlas," writes the 
British Quarterly, " will be an invaluable boon for the school, the desk, or 
the traveller's portmanteau. " 



Guizot. — (Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman.")— M. DE 
BARANTE, A Memoir, Biographical and Autobiographical. By 
M. Guizot. Translated by the Author of "John Halifax, 
Gentleman." Crown 8vo. 6s. 6d. 

" The highest purposes of both history and biography are a?iszaered by a 
memoir so lifelike, so faithful, and so philosophical." 

British Quarterly Review. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &- TRAVELS. 9 

HISTORICAL SELECTIONS. Readings from the best Authorities 
on English and European History. Selected and arranged by 
E. M. Sewell and C. M. Yonge. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

WJien young children have acquired the outlines of history from abridge- 
ments and catechisms, and it becomes desirable to give a more enlarged 
viezv of the subject, in order to render it really useful and interesting, a 
difficulty often arises as to the choice of books. Two courses are open, either 
to take a general and consequently dry history of facts, such as RusselVs 
Modern Europe, or to choose some work treating of a particidar period or 
subject, such as the works of Macaiday and Froude. The forma' course 
usually renders history uni/iteresting ; the latter is unsatisfactory, because 
it is not sufficiently comprehensive. To j-emedy this difficulty, selections, 
continuous and chronological, have in the present volume been taken from 
the larger works of Freeman, Milman, Palgrave, and others, which may 
serve as distinct landmarks of historical reading. " We know of scarcely 
anything" says the Guardian, of this volume, "which is so likely to raise 
to a higher level the average standard of English education.'''' 

Hole. — A GENEALOGICAL STEMMA OF THE KINGS OF 
ENGLAND AND FRANCE. By the Rev. C. Hole, M.A., 
Trinity College, Cambridge. On Sheet, is. 
The different families are printed in distinguishing colours, thus facili- 
tating reference. 

A BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. Compiled and 
Arranged by the Rev. Charles Hole, M.A. Second Edition. 
i8mo. neatly and strongly bound in cloth, 4s. 6d. 

One of the most comprehensive and accurate Biographical Dictionaries 
in the world, containing more than 18,000 persons of all countries, with 
dates of birth and death, and what they were distinguished for. Extreme 
care has been bestowed on the verification of the dates ; and thus numerous 
errors, current in previous works, have been corrected. Its size adapts it 
for the desk, portmanteau, or pocket. 

"An invaluable addition to our manuals of reference, and, from its 
moderate price, cannot fail to become as popular as it is useful.'''' — TIMES. 



io GENERAL CATALOGUE. 



Hozier. — THE SEVEN WEEKS' WAR ; Its Antecedents and 
its Incidents. By. H. M. Hozier. With Maps and Plans. Two 
vols. 8vo. 2%s. 

This work is based upon letters reprinted by permission from " The 
Times. " For the most part it is a product of a personal eye-witness of some 
of the most interesting incidents of a war which, for rapidity and decisive 
results, may claim an almost unrivalled position in history. 

THE BRITISH EXPEDITION TO ABYSSINIA. Compiled from 

Authentic Documents. By Captain Henry M. Hozier, late 

Assistant Military Secretary to Lord Napier of Magdala. 8vo. gs. 

' ' Several accounts of the British Expedition have been published. .... 

They have, however, been written by those who have not had access to those 

authe?itic documents, which cannot be collected directly after the termination 

of a campaign The endeavour of the author of this sketch has been to 

present to readers a succinct and impartial account of an enterprise which 
has rarely been equalled in the annals of war" — PREFACE. 

Irving.— THE ANNALS OF OUR TIME. A Diurnal of Events, 
Social and Political, which have happened in or had relation to 
the Kingdom of Great Britain, from the Accession of Queen 
Victoria to the Opening of the present Parliament. By Joseph 
Irving. 8vo. half-bound. i8j\ 

" We have before us a trusty and ready guide to the events of the past 
thirty years, available equally for the statesman, the politician, the public 
wi'iler, arid the general reader. If Mr. Irving' s object has been to bring 
before the reader all the most noteworthy occurrences which have happened 
since the beginning of Her Majesty's reign, he may justly claim the credit 
of having done so most briefly, succinctly, and simply, and in such a 
manner, too, as to furnish him with the details necessary in each case to 
comprehend the event of which he is in search in an intelligent manner. 
Reflection will serve to show the great value of such a work as this to the 
journalist and statesman, and indeed to every one who feels an interest in 
the progress of the age ; and we may add that its value is considerably in- 
creased by the addition of that most important of all appendices, an 
accurate and instructive index." — Times. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, &+ TRAVELS. n 

Kingsley (Canon). — ON THE ANCIEN REGIME as it 
Existed on the Continent before the French Revolution. 
Three Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution. By the Rev. 
C. Kingsley, M.A., formerly Professor of Modern History 
in the University of Cambridge. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

These three lectures discuss severally (i) Caste, (2) Centralization, (3) 
The Explosive Forces by which the Revolution was superinduced. The 
Preface deals at some length with certain political questions of the present 
day. 

THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. A Series of Lectures 
delivered before the University of Cambridge. By Rev. C 
Kingsley, M.A. 8vo. 12s. 

Contents: — Inaugural Lecture ; The Forest Children; The Dying 
Empire; The Human Deluge ; The Gothic Civilizer ; Dietriches End; The 
Nemesis oj the Goths ; Paulus Diaconus ; The Clergy and the Heathen : 
The Monk a Civilizer ; The Lombard Laws ; The Popes and the Lombards ; 
The Strategy of Providence. 

Kingsley (Henry, F.R.G.S.).— TALES OF OLD 
TRAVEL. Re-narrated by Henry Kingsley, F.R.G.S. With 
Eight Illustrations by Huard. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

Contents: — Marco Polo ; The Shipwreck of ' Pels art ; The Wonderful 
Adventures of Andrew Battel; The Wanderings of a Capuchin; Peter 
Cardei-; The Preservation of the "Terra Nova;" Spitzbergen ; D'Erme- 
nonvillis Acclimatization Adventure; The Old Slave Trade; Miles Philips ; 
The Sufferings of Robert Everard ; John Fox ; Alvaro Nunez ; The Foun- 
dation of an Empire. 

Latham . — BLACK AND WHITE : A Journal of a Three Months' 
Tour in the United States. By Henry Latham, M. A., Barrister- 
at-Law. 8vo. iar. 6d. 
" The spirit in which Mr. Latham has written about our brethren in 

America is commendable in high degree." — ATHENAEUM. 



12 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Law. — THE ALPS OF HANNIBAL. By William John Law, 

M.A., formerly Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Two vols. 

8vo. 2 1 s. 

" No one can read the work and not acquire a cojiviction that, in 

addition to a thorough grasp of a particular topic y its writer has at 

command a large store of reading and thought upon many cognate points 

of ancient history and geography ," — Quarterly Review. 

Liverpool. — THE LIFE AND ADMINISTRATION OF 

ROBERT BANKS, SECOND EARL OF LIVERPOOL, K.G. 

Compiled from Original Family Documents by Charles Duke 

Yonge, Regius Professor of History and English Literature in 

Queen's College, Belfast ; and Author of " The History of the 

British Navy," " The History of France under the Bourbons," etc. 

Three vols. 8vo. 42^. 

Since the time of Lord Burleigh no one, except the second Pitt, ever 

enjoyed so long a tenure of power ; with the same exception, no one ever 

held office at so critical a time .... Lord Liverpool is the veiy last 

minister who has been able fitlly to carry out his own political views ; who 

has been so strong that in matters of general policy the Opposition could 

extort no concessions from him which were not sanctioned by his own 

deliberate judgment. The present work is founded almost entirely on the 

correspondence left behind him by Lord Liverpool, and now in the possession 

of Colonel and Lady Catherine Harcourt. 

"Full of information and instruction" — Fortnightly Review. 

Maclear. — See Section, "Ecclesiastical History." 

Macmillan (Rev. Hugh). — HOLIDAYS ON HIGH 

LANDS ; or, Rambles and Incidents in search of Alpine Plants. 

By the Rev. Hugh Macmillan, Author of " Bible Teachings in 

Nature," etc. Crown 8vo. cloth. 6s. 
" Botanical knowledge is blended with a love of nature, a pious en- 
thusiasm, and a rich felicity of diction not to be met with in any works 
of kindred character, if we except those of Hugh Miller." — Daily 
Telegraph. 



Macmillan (Rev. Hugh), [continued)— 

FOOT-NOTES FROM THE PAGE OF NATURE. With 
numerous Illustrations. Fcap. 8vo. Jr« 

" Those who have derived pleasure and profit from the study of filozvers 
and ferns — subjects, it is pleasing to find, now- everywhere popndar — by 
descending lower into the arcana of the vegetable kingdom, will find a still 
more interesting and delightful field of research in the objects brought tinder 
review in the following pages''' — Preface. 

BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Fourth Edition. Fcap Svo. 
6s. — See also "Scientific Section." 

Martin (Frederick).— the STATESMAN'S YEAR-BOOK .- 

A Statistical and Historical Account of the States of the Civilised 
World. Manual for Politician and Merchants for the year 1870. 
By Frederick Martin. Seventh Afinual Publication. Crown 
8vo. 1 or. 6d. 

The neiv issue has been entirely re-written, revised, and corrected, on the 
basis of official reports received direct from the heads of the leading Govern-. 
?nents of the World, in reply to letters sent to them by the Editor. 

" Everybody who knows this work is aware that it is a book that is indis- 
pensable to writers, financiers, politicians, statesmen, and all who are 
directly or indirectly interested in the political, social, industrial, com- 
mercial, and financial condition of their fellow-creatures at home and 
abroad. Mr. Martin deserves warm commendation for the care he takes 
in making * The Statesman's Year Book'' complete and correct." 

Standard. 

Martineau. — BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, 1852— 1868. 

By Harriet Martineau. Third Edition, with New Preface. 

Crown 8vo. Ss. 6d. 
A Collection of Memoirs under these several sections : — (i) Royal, (2) 
Politicians, (3) Professional, (4) Scientific, (5) Social, (6) Literary. These 
Memoirs appeared originally in the columns of the " Daily News." 



14 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Masson (Professor).— essays, biographical and 

CRITICAL. See Section headed " Poetry and Belles Lettres. " 

LIFE OF JOHN MILTON. Narrated in connexion with the 
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time. By 
David Masson, M.A., LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric at Edin- 
burgh. Vol. I. with Portraits. 8vo. i8.r. Vol. II. in the Press. 

It is intended to exhibit Milton's life in its connexions with all the more 
notable phenomena of the period of British history in which it was cast — 
its state politics, its ecclesiastical variations, its literature and speculative 
thought. Commencing in 1608, the Life of Milton proceeds through the 
last sixteen years of the reign of James I. , includes the whole of the reign 
of Charles L. ana the subsequent years of the Commonwealth and the 
Protectorate, and then, passing the Restoration, extends itself to 1 674, or 
through fourteen years of the new state of things under Charles II. The 
first volume deals with the life of Milton as extending from 1608 to 1 640, 
which was the period of his education and of his minor poems. 

Morison. — the life and times of saint Bernard, 

Abbot of Clairvaux. By James Cotter Morison, M.A. New 
Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 

" One of the best contributions in our literature towards a vivid, intel- 
ligent, and worthy knowledge of European interests and thoughts and 
feelings during the twelfth century. A delightful and instructive volume, 
and one oj the best products of the modem historic spirit." 

Pall Mall Gazette. 

Morley (John). — EDMUND BURKE, a Historical Study. By 
John Morley, B. A. Oxon. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d. 

" The style is terse and incisive, and brilliant with epigram and point. 
It contains pithy aphoristic sentences which Burke himself would not have 
disowned. But these are not its best features : its sustained power of 
reasoning, its wide sweep of observation and reflection, its elevated ethical 
and social tone, sta7np it as a work of high excellence, and as such we 
cordially recommend it to our readers." — Saturday Review. 



Mullinger. — CAMBRIDGE CHARACTERISTICS IN THE 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. By J. B. Mullinger, B.A. 
Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. 

" // is a very entertaining and readable book." — SATURDAY REVIEW. 

" The chapters on the Cartesian Philosophy and the Ca?nbridge Platonists 
are admirable" — ATHENAEUM. 



Palgrave. — HISTORY OF NORMANDY AND OF ENG- 
LAND. By Sir Francis Palgrave, Deputy Keeper of Her 
Majesty's Public Records. Completing the History to the Death 
of William Rufus. Four vols. 8vo. £4 4s. 

Volume I. General delations of Mediceval Europe — The Carlovingian 
Empire — The Danish Expeditions in the Gauls — And the Establishment 
of Polio. Volume II. The Three Eirst Dukes of Normandy ; Polio, 
Guillaume Tongue- Epce, an d Richard Sans-Peur — The Carlovingian 
line supplanted by the Capets. Volume III. Richard Sans-Peur — 
Richard Le-Bon — Richard III. — Robert Le Diable — William the Con- 
queror. Volume IV. William Rufus — Accession of Henry Beauclerc. 



Palgrave (W. G.)-— A NARRATIVE OF A YEAR'S 
JOURNEY THROUGH CENTRAL AND EASTERN 
ARABIA, 1862-3. B y William Gifford Palgrave, late of 
the Eighth Regiment Bombay N. I. Fifth and cheaper Edition. 
With Maps, Plans, and Portrait of Author, engraved on steel by 
Jeens. Crown 8vo. 6s. 

" Considering the extent of our previous ignorance, the amount of his 
achievements, and the importance of his contributions to our knowledge, we 
cannot say less of him than was once said of a far greater discoverer. Mr. 
Palgrave has indeed given a ?iew world to Europe." — Pall Mall Gazette. 



16 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Parkes (Henry).— AUSTRALIAN VIEWS OF ENGLAND. 

By Henry Parkes. Crown 8vo. cloth. y. 6d. 

" The following letters were written during a residence in England, in 
the years 186 1 and 1862, and were published in the Sydney Morning 
Herald on the arrival of the monthly ?nails . ... On re-perusal, these 
letters appear to contain views of English life and impressions of English 
notabilities which, as the views and impressions of an Englishman on his 
return to his native country after an absence of twenty years, may not be 
without interest to the English reader. The writer had opportunities of 
mixing with different classes of the British people, and of hearing opinions 
on passing events from opposite standpoints of observation.'''' — Author's 
Preface. 



Prichard.— THE ADMINISTRATION OF INDIA. From 
1859 to 1868. The First Ten Years of Administration under the 
Crown. By Iltudus Thomas Prichard, Barrister-at-Law. 
Two vols. Demy 8vo. With Map. 21 s. 

In these volumes the author has aimed to supply a full, impartial, and 
independent account of British India between 1859 and 1868 — which is 
in many respects the most important epoch in the history of that country 
which the present century has seen. 



Ralegh.— THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH, based 
upon Contemporary Documents. By Edward Edwards. To- 
gether with Ralegh's Letters, now first collected. With Portrait. 
Two vols. 8vo. 32J-. 

" Mr. Edwards has certainly written the Life of Ralegh from fuller 
information than any previous biographer. He is intelligent, industrious, 
sympathetic : and the world has in his two volumes larger means afforded 
it of knowing Ralegh than it ever possessed before. The new letters and 
the newly-edited old letters are in themselves a boon." — Pall Mall 
Gazette. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, fr TRAVELS. 17 

Robinson (Crabb). — DIARY, REMINISCENCES, AND 
CORRESPONDENCE OF CRABB ROBINSON. Selected 
and Edited by Dr. Sadler. With Portrait. Second Edition. 
Three vols. 8vo. cloth. 36s. 

Mr. Crabb Robinson's Diary extends over the greater part of three- 
quarters of a century. It contains personal reminiscences of some of the 
most distinguished characters of that period, including Goethe, Wieland, De 
Quincey, Wordsworth (with whom Mr. Crabb Robinson was on terms op 
great bitimacy), Madame de Stael, Lafayette, Coleridge, Lamb, Milman, 
&°c. 6-Y. : and includes a vast variety of subjects, political, literary, ecclesi- 
astical, and miscellaneous. 

Rogers (James E. Thorold).— HISTORICAL GLEAN- 
INGS : A Series of Sketches. Montague, Wdpole, Adam Smith, 
Cobbett. By Rev. J. E. T. Rogers. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. 

Professor Rogers's object in the following sketches is to present a set of 
historical facts, grouped round a principal figure. The essays are in the 
form of lectures. 

Smith (Professor Goldwin). — three ENGLISH 

STATESMEN: PYM, CROMWELL, PITT. A Course of 
Lectures on the Political History of England. By Goldwin 
Smith, M. A. Extra fcap. 8vo. New and Cheapei Edition. $s. 

"A work which neither historian nor politician can safely afford to 
neglect."— Saturday Review. 

Tacitus. — THE HISTORY OF TACITUS, translated into 
English. By A. J. Church, M.A. and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. 
With a Map and Notes. 8vo. iox. 6d. 

The translators have endeavoured to adhere as closely to the original as 
was thought consistent with a proper observance of English idiom. At 
the same time it has been their aim to reproduce the precise expressions of 
the author. This work is characterised by the Spectator as u a scholarly 
and faithful translation." 



THE AGRICOLA AND GERMANIA. Translated into English by 
A. J. Church, M.A. and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. With Maps 
and Notes. Extra fcap. 8vo, 2s, 6d. 

The translators have sought to produce such a version as may satisfy 
scholars who demand a faithful rendering of the original, and English 
readers who are offended by tjie baldness and frigidity which commonly 
disfigure translations. The treatises are accompanied by introductions, 
notes, maps, and a chronological summary. The Athenaeum says of 
this work that it is " a version at once readable and exact, which may be 
perused with pleasure by all, and consulted with advantage by the classical 
student.'''' 

Taylor (Rev. Isaac). — WORDS AND PLACES; or 

Etymological Illustrations of History, Etymology, and Geography. 
By the Rev. Isaac Taylor. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 
\2s. 6d. 

" Mr. Taylor has produced a really useful book, and one which stands 
alone in our language." — Saturday Review. 

Trench (Archbishop).— GUSTAVUS apolphus : Social 

Aspects of the Thirty Years' War. By R. Chenevix Trench, 
D. D. , Archbishop of Dublin. Fcap. 8vo . 2s. 6d. 

" Clear and lucid in style, these lectures will be a treasure to many to 
whom the subject is unfamiliar, ." — Dublin Evening Mail. 



Trench (Mrs. R.). — Edited by Archbishop Trench. Remains 
of the late Mrs. RICHARD TRENCH. Being Selections from 
her Journals, Letters, and other Papers. New and Cheaper Issue, 
with Portrait, 8vo. 6s. 

Contains notices and anecdotes ilhistrating the social life of the period 
— extending over a quarter of a century (1799 — 1827). -# includes also 
poems and other miscellaneous pieces by Mrs. Trench. 



Trench (Capt. F., F.R.G.S.).— THE RUSSO-INDIAN 

QUESTION, Historically, Strategically, and Politically con- 
sidered. By Capt. Trench, F.R.G.S. With a Sketch of Central 
Asiatic Politics and Map of Central Asia. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 

" The Russo- Indian, or Central Asian question has for several obvious 
reasons been attracting much public attention in England, in Russia, and 
also on the Continent, within the last year or two. . . . I have thought 
that the present volume, giving a short sketch of the history of this question 

from its earliest origin, and condensing much of the most recent and inte- 
resting information on the subject, and on its collateral phases, might 

perhaps be acceptable to those who take an interest in it.'''' — Author's 
Preface. 

Trevelyan (G.O., M.P.). — CAWNPORE. Illustrated with 
Plan. By G. O. Trevelyan, M.P., Author of "The Com- 
petition Wallah." Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
"In this book we are not spared one fact of the sad story ; but our 
feelings are not han'owed by the recital of imaginary outrages. It is good 
for us at home that we have one who tells his tale so well as does Mr. 
Trrjelyan." — Pall Mall Gazette. 

THE COMPETITION WALLAH. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
" The earlier letters are especially interesting for their racy descriptions 

of European life in India Those that follow are of more serious 

import, seeking to tell the truth about the Hindoo character and English 
influences, good and bad, upon it, as well as to suggest some better course of 
treatment than that hitherto adopted." — EXAMINER. 

Vaughan (late Rev. Dr. Robert, of the British 
Quarterly). — MEMOIR OF ROBERT A. VAUGHAN. 

Author of "Hours with the Mystics." By Robert Vaughan, 

D.D. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 

" It deserves a place on the same shelf with Stanley's ' Life of Arnold,' 

and Carlyle's ' Stirling? Dr. Vaughan has performed his painful but 

not all unplcasing task with exquisite good taste and feeling.'" — N ON CON- 

FORM I ST. 

6 2 



20 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Wagner. — memoir of the rev. george wagner, 

M. A., late Incumbent of St. Stephen's Church, Brighton. By the 
Rev. J. N. Simpkinson, M.A. Third and cheaper Edition, cor- 
rected and abridged. $s. 

" A more edifying biography we have rarely met with." 

Literary Churchman. 

Wallace.— THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO : the Land of the 
Orang Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travels 
with Studies of Man and Nature. By Alfred Russel Wallace. 
With Maps and Illustrations. Second Edition. Two vols, crown 
8vo. 24s. 

u A caj-eftilly and deliberately composed narrative. . . . We advise 
our readers to do as we have done, read his book through." — Times. 

Ward (Professor).— THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA IN THE 
THIRTY YEARS' WAR. Two Lectures, with Notes and Illus- 
trations. By Adolphus W. Ward, M.A., Professor of History 
in Owens College, Manchester. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 

" Very compact and instructive." — Fortnightly Review. 

Warren.— AN ESSAY ON GREEK FEDERAL COINAGE. 
By the Hon. J. Leicester Warren, M.A. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 

" The present essay is an atte?npt to illustrate Mr. Freeman's Federal 
Government by evide?ice dediiced from the coinage of the times and countiies 
therein treated of." — Preface. 

Wilson. — A MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON, M. D., 
F.R.S.E., Regius Professor of Technology in the University of 
Edinburgh. By his Sister. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
" An exquisite and touching portrait of a rare and beautiful spirit. " 

Guardian. 



HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, 6- TRAVELS. 21 

Wilson (Daniel, LL.D.).— PREHISTORIC ANNALS 

OF SCOTLAND. By Daniel Wilson, LL.D., Professor of 
History and English Literature in University College, Toronto. 
New Edition, with numerous Illustrations. Two vols, demy 
8vo. 36^. 

This elaborate and learned work is divided into four Parts. Part I. 
deals with The Primeval or Stone Period : Aboriginal Traces, Sepulchral 
Memorials, Diuellings, and Catacombs, Temples, Weapons, &c. &c. ; 
Part II, The Bronze Period : The Metallurgic Transition, Primitive 
Bronze, Personal Ornaments, Religion, Arts, and Domestic Habits, with 
other topics ; Part HI, The Iron Period : The Introduction of Iron, The 
Roman Invasion, Strongholds, &>c. &=c.; Part IV., The Christian Period : 
Historical Data, the Norrifs Law Relics, Primitive and Mediceval 
Ecclesiology, Ecclesiastical and Miscellaneous Antiquities. The work is 
furnished with an elaborate Index. 

PREHISTORIC MAN. New Edition,, re vised and partly re- written, 
with numerous Illustrations. One vol. 8vo. z\s. 

This work, which carries out the principle of the preceding one, but with 
a wider scope, aims to a view Man, as far as possible, unaffected by those 
modifying influences which accompany the development of nations and the 
maturity of a true historic period, in order thereby to ascertain the sources 
from whence such development and maturity proceed." It contains, for 
example, chapters on the Primeval Transition ; Speech ; Metals ; the 
Mound- Builders ; Primitive Architecture ; the American Type; the Red 
Blood of the West, &»c. &c. 



SECTION II. 



POETRY AND BELLES LETTRES. 

Allingham. — LAURENCE BLOOMFIELD IN IRELAND; 
or, the New Landlord. By William Allingham. New and 
. cheaper issue, with a Preface. Fcap. 8vo. cloth, 4s-. 6d. 

In the new Preface, the state of Ireland, with special reference to the 
Church measure, is discussed. 

* ' It is vital with the national character. . . . It has something of Pope's 
point and Goldsmith's simplicity, touched to a more modern issue." — 
Athen/eum. 

Arnold (Matthew). — POEMS. By Matthew Arnold. 
Two vols. Extra fcap. 8 vo. cloth. 12s. Also sold separately at 6s. 
each. 

Volume I. contains Narrative and Elegiac Poems ; Volume II. Dra- 
matic and lyric Poems. The ttvo volumes comprehend the First and 
Second Series of the Poems, and the New Poems. 

NEW POEMS. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6a. 

In this volume will be found u Empedocles on Etna ; " " Thyrsis " (written 
in commemoration of the late Professor Clough) ; " Epilogue to lessings 
Zaocoon;" " Heine s Grave;" " Obermann once more.'''' All these 
poems are also included in the Edition {two vols. ) above-mentioned. 



POETRY &* BELLES LE TERES. 



23 



Arnold (Matthew), [continued)— 

ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. New Edition, with Additions. Extra 
fcap. 8vo. 6j\ 

Contents : — Preface ; The Function of Criticism at the present time ; 
TJie Literary Lnfluence of Academies ; Maurice de Guerin ; Eugenie 
de Guerin ; Heinrich Heine ; Pagan and Mediceval Religious Sentiment ; 
Joubert ; Spinoza and the Bible ; Marcus Atirelius. 

ASPROMONTE, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. cloth 
extra. 4s. 6d. 

Contexts : — Poems for Italy ; Dramatic Lyrics ; Miscellaneous. 

Barnes (Rev. W.). — poems of rural life in com- 
mon ENGLISH. By the Rev. W. Barnes, Author of 
" Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect." Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" In a high degree pleasant and novel. The book is by no means one 
which the lovers of descriptive poetry can afford to lose.'''' — AthentEUM. 

Bell. — ROMANCES AND MINOR POEMS. By Henry 
Glassford Bell. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" Full of life and genius." — Court Circular. 

Besant.— STUDIES IN EARLY FRENCH POETRY. By 
Walter Besant, M.A. Crown. 8vo. Ss. 6d. 

A sort of impression rests on most minds that French literature begins 
with the (( siecle de Louis Quatorze;" any previous literature being for 
the most part unknown or ignored. Feiu know anything of the enormous 
literary activity that began in the thirteenth century, was carried on by 
Rulebeuf Marie de France, Gaston de Foix, Thibault de Champagne, 
and Lorris ; was fostered by Charles of Orleans, by Margaret of Valois, 
by Francis the lirst ; that gave a crowd of versifiers to France, enriched, 
strengthened, developed, and fixed the French language, and prepared the 
way for Corneille and for Racine. The present work aims to afford 



information and direction touching the early efforts of France in poetical 
literature. 

" In one moderately sized volume he has contrived to introduce us to the 
very best, if not to all of the early French poets.'" — Athenaeum. 

Bradshaw.— an attempt to ascertain the state 

OF CHAUCER'S WORKS, AS THEY WERE LEFT AT 
HIS DEATH. With some Notes of their Subsequent History. 
By Henry Bradshaw, of King's College, and the University 
Library, Cambridge. [In the Press. 

Brimley.— ESSAYS BY THE LATE GEORGE BRIMLEY-, 

M.A. Edited by the Rev. W. G. Clark, M.A. With Portrait. 
Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. -$s. 6d. 

Essays on literary topics, such as Tennyson s "Poems" CarlyUs 
" life of Stirling," "Bleak House" &>c, reprinted from Fraser, the 
Spectator, and like periodicals. 

Broome. — THE STRANGER OF SER1PHOS. A Dramatic 
Poem. By Frederick Napier Broome. Fcap. 8vo. 5j, 

Founded on the Greek legend of Danae and Perseus. 

Clough (Arthur Hugh).— THE POEMS AND PROSE 
REMAINS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. With a 
Selection from his Letters and a Memoir. Edited by his Wife. 
With Portrait. Two vols, crown 8vo. i\s. Or Poems sepa- 
rately, as below. 

The late Professor Clough is well known as a graceful, tender poet, 
and as the scholarly translator of Plutarch. The letters possess high 
interest, not biographical only, but literary — discussing, as they do, the 
most important question'! of the time, always in a genial spirit. The 
"Remains" include papers on ** Retrenchment at Oxford ;" on Professor 
F. W. Newman's book " The Soul;" on Wordsworth ; on the Formation 
of Classical English ; on some Modern Poems {Matthew Arnold and the 
late Alexander Smith), &°r. &*c. 



POETRY &* BELLES LETTRES. 25 



Clough (Arthur Hugh), (continued) — 

THE POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, sometime Fellow 
of Oriel College, Oxford. With a Memoir by F. T. Palgraye. 
Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

"From the higher mind of cultivated, all-questioning, but still conser- 
vative England, in this our puzzled generation, we do not know of any 
utterance in literaim-e so characteristic as the poems of Arthur Hugh 
Clough. " — Fraser's Magazine. 



Dante. — DANTE'S COMEDY, THE HELL. Translated by 
W. M. Rossetti. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. $s. 

" The aim of this translation of Dante may be summed up in one "word 
— Literality. . . . To follow Dante sentence for sentence, line for line, 
word for word — neither more nor less — has been my strenuous endeavour. " 
— Author's Preface. 



De Vere. — THE INFANT BRIDAL, and other Poems. By 
Aubrey De Vere. Fcap. 8vo. ?s. 6d. 
"Mr. De Vere has taken his place among the poets of the day. Pure 
and tender feeling, and that polished restraint of style which is called 
classical, are the charms of the volume." — SPECTATOR. 

Doyle (Sir F. H.). — Works by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 
Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford : — 

THE RETURN OF THE GUARDS, AND OTHER POEMS. 
Fcap. 8vo. *js. 

" Good wine needs no bush, nor good verse a preface ; and Sir Francis 
Doyle's verses run bright and clear, and smack of a classic vintage. . . . 
His chief characteristic, as it is his greatest charm, is the simple manliness 
which gives force to all he writes. It is a characteristic in these days rare 
enough. ' ' — Exam i n e r. 



GENERAL CATALOGUE. 



Doyle (Sir F. H.), [continued)— 

LECTURES ON POETRY, delivered before the University of 
Oxford in 1868. Extra crown 8vo. 3-f. 6d. 

Three Lectures : — (1) Inaugural ; (2) Provincial Poetry ; (3) Dr. 
Newmarfs "Dream of Gero7itius." 

"Pull of thoughtful discrimination and fine insight: the lecture on 
1 Provincial Poetry"' seems to us singularly true, eloquent, and instructive^ 

Spectator. 

Evans. — BROTHER FABIAN'S MANUSCRIPT, AND 
OTHER POEMS. By Sebastian Evans. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 
6s. 
" In this volume we have full assurance that he has ' the vision and the 

faculty divine, ,' . . . Clever and full of kindly humour." — Globe. 

Furnivall. — LE MORTE D'ARTHUR. Edited from the Harteian 
M.S. 2252, in the British Museum. By F. J. Furnivall, M.A. 
With Essay by the late Herbert Coleridge. Fcap. 8vo. ys. 6d. 

Looking to the interest shown by so many thousands in Mr. Tennyson 's 
Arthurian poems, the editor and publishers have thought that the old 
version would possess considerable interest. It is a reprint of the celebrated 
Harleian copy ; and is accompanied by index and glossary. 

Garnett. — IDYLLS AND EPIGRAMS. Chiefly from the Greek 
Anthology. By Richard Garnett. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 

"A charming little book. For English readers, Mr. Garnett 's transla- 
tions tvill open a new world of 'thought '." — Westminster Review. 

GUESSES AT TRUTH. By Two Brothers. With Vignette, 
Title, and Frontispiece. New Edition, with Memoir. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" The following year was memorable for the commencement of the 
1 Guesses at Truth. ' He and his Oxford brother, living as they did in 
constant and free interchange of thought on questions of philosophy and 



literature and art ; delighting, each of them, in the epigrammatic terseness 
which is the charm of the ' Pensees ' of Pascal, and the ' Carac teres ' of La 
Bruyere — agreed to tetter themselves in this form, and the book appeared, 
anonymously, in two volumes, in 1 82 7." — Memoir. 

Hamerton. — A PAINTER'S CAMP. By Philip Gilbert 
Hamerton. Second Edition, revised. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

Book I. In England ; Book II. In Scotland; Book III. In France. 
This is the story of an Artist' 's encampments and adventures. The 
headings of a fezu chapters may serve to cotivey a notion of the character 
of the book : A Walk on the Lancashire Moors ; the Author his own 
Housekeeper and Cook ; Tents and Boats for the Highlands ; The Author 
encamps on an uninhabited Island ; A Lake Voyage ; A Gipsy fountey 
to Glen Coe ; Concerting Moonlight and Old Castles ; A little French 
City ; A Farm in the Autunois, &"c. & a c. 

" His pages sparkle with happy turns of expression, not a few well-told 
anecdotes, and many observations which are the fruit of attentive study and 
wise reflectio?i on the complicated phenomena of human life, as well as of 
unconscious nature"'' — Westminster Review. 

ETCHING AND ETCHERS. A Treatise Critical and Practical. 
By P. G. Hamerton. With Original Plates by Rembrandt, 
Callot, Dujardin, Paul Potter, &c. Royal 8vo. Half 
morocco. 3U. 6d. 

" It is a work of which author, printer, and publisher may alike feel 
proud. It is a work, too, of which none but a genuine artist could by pos- 
sibility have been the author."— Saturday Review. 

Helps. — REALMAH. By Arthur Helps. Cheap Edition. 
Crown 8vo. 6s. 

Of this work, by the Author of "Friends in Council" the Saturday 
Review says: " Underneath the form {that of dialogue) is so much shrewd- 
ness, fancy, and above all, so much wise kindliness, that we should think 
all the better of a man or woman who likes the book." 



Herschel.— THE ILIAD OF HOMER. Translated into English 
Hexameters. By Sir John Herschel, Bart. 8vo. i8j-. 

A version of the Iliad in English Hexameters. The question of Homeric 
translation is fully discussed in the Preface. 

"It is admirable, not only for many intrinsic merits, but as a great 
man's tribute to Genius." — Illustrated London News. 

HIATUS : the Void in Modern Education. Its Cause and Antidote. 
By Outis. 8vo. &r. 6d. 

The main object of this Essay is to point out how the emotional element 
which underlies the Fine Arts is disregarded and undeveloped at this time 
so far as {despite a pretence at filling it up) to constitute an Educational 
Hiatus. 

HYMNI ECCLESLE. See "Theological Section." 

Kennedy. — LEGENDARY FICTIONS OF THE IRISH 
CELTS. Collected and Narrated by Patrick Kennedy. Crown 
8vo. *js. 6d. 

"A very admirable popular selection of the Irish fairy stories and legends, 
in which those who are familiar with Mr. Crokers, and other selections 
of the same kind, will find much that is fresh, and full of the peculiar 
vivacity and humour, and sometimes even of the ideal beauty, of the true 
Celtic Legend." — Spectator. 

Kingsley (Canon). — See also "Historic Section," "Works 
of Fiction," and "Philosophy;" also "Juvenile Books," 
and " Theology." 

THE SAINTS' TRAGEDY:" or, The True Story of Elizabeth of 
Hungary. By the Rev. Charles Kingsley. With a Preface by 
the Rev. F. D. Maurice. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. <,s. 

ANDROMEDA, AND OTHER POEMS. Third Edition. Fcap. 
8vo. 5-r. 



POETRY &* BELLES LE TERES. 29 

Kingsley (Canon), {continued)— 

PHAETHON ; or, Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers. Third 
Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 

Kingsley (Henry). — See "Works of Fiction." 

Lowell.— UNDER THE WILLOWS, AND OTHER POEMS 
By James Russell Lowell. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" Under the Willows is one of the most admirable bits of idyllic work, 
short as it is, or perhaps because it is short, that have been done in our gate- 
ration? — Saturday Review. 

Masson (Professor).— ESSAYS, BIOGRAPHICAL AND 

CRITICAL. Chiefly on the British Poets. By David Masson, 
LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh. 
8vo. I2J. 6d. 

"Distinguished by a remarkable power of analysis, a clear statement 
of the actual facts on which speculation is based, and an appropriate 
beauty of Language. These essays should be popular with serious men. " 

ATHENiEUM. 

BRITISH NOVELISTS AND THEIR STYLES. Being a Critical 
Sketch of the History of British Prose Fiction. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. 

" Valuable for its lucid analysis of fundamental principles, its breadth 
of view, and sustained animation of style." — SPECTATOR. 

MRS. JERNINGHAM'S JOURNAL. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d. A 
Poem of the boudoir or domestic class, purporting to be the journal 
of a newly-married lady. 

11 One quality in the piece, sufficient of itself to claim a moment's atten- 
tion, is that it is unique— original, indeed, is not too strong a word— in 
the manner of its conception and execution." — Pall Mall Gazette. 



30 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Mistral (F.).— MIRELLE: a Pastoral Epic of Provence. Trans- 
lated by H. Crichton. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" This is a capital translation of the elegant ana richly -coloured pastoral 
epic poem of M. Mistral which, in 1859, he dedicated in enthusiastic 

terms to Lamartine. It would be hard to overpraise the 

sweetness and pleasing freshness of this charming epic.'''' — Athenaeum. 

Myers (Ernest). — THE PURITANS. By Ernest Myers. 
Extra fcap. 8vo. cloth. 2s. 6d. 

** It is not too much to call it a really grand poem, stately and dignified, 
and showing not only a high poetic mind, but also great power over poetic 
expression." — Literary Churchman. 

Myers (F. W. H.)— ST. PAUL. A Poem. By F. W. H. 
Myers. Second Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d, 

" It breathes throughout the spirit of St. Paul, and with a singular 
stately melody of verse? — Fortnightly Review. 

Nettleship. — ESSAYS ON ROBERT BROWNING'S 
POETRY. By John T, Nettleship. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 6d. 

Noel.— BEATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Hon. 
Roden Noel. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

"Beatrice is in many respects a noble poem; it displays a splendour 
of landscape painting, a strong definite precision of highly-coloured descrip- 
tion, which has not often been surpassed." — Pall Mall Gazette. 

Norton.— THE LADY OF LA GARAYE, By the Hon. Mrs 
Norton. With Vignette and Frontispiece. Sixth Edition 
Fcap. 8vo. 4-r. 6d. 

" There is no lack of vigour, no faltering of power, plenty of passion, 
much bright description, much musical verse. . . . Full of thoughts well- 
expressed, and may be classed among her best works." — TlMES. 



POETRY fr BELLES LE TERES. 31 

Orwell.— THE BISHOP'S WALK AND THE BISHOP'S 
TIMES. Poems on the days of Archbishop Leighton and the 
Scottish Covenant. By Orwell. Fcap. 8vo. 5j\ 

" Pure taste and faultless precision of language, the fruits of deep thought, 
insight into human nature, and lively sympathy.'''' — NONCONFORMIST. 

Palgrave (Francis T.). — ESSAYS ON ART. By Francis 
Turner Palgrave, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, 
Oxford. Extra fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

Mulready — Dyce — Holman Hunt — Herbert — Poetry, Prose, ana Sen- 
sationalism in Art — Sculpture in England — The Albert Cross, &c, 

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS AND SONGS. Edited by F. T. 
Palgrave. Gem Edition. With Vignette Title by Je ens. y, 6d. 

" Por minute elegance no volume could possibly excel the 'Gem 
Edition.' " — Scotsman. 

Patmore. — Works by Coventry Patmore :— 

THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE. 

Book I. The Betrothal ; Book II. The Espousals; Book III. 
Faithful for Ever. With Tamerton Church Tower. Two vols. fcap. 
8vo. 12s. 

%* A New and Cheap Edition in one vol. \%mo., beautifully printed on 
toned paper, price 2s. (id. 

THE VICTORIES OF LOVE. Fcap. 8vo. v> &• 

The intrinsic merit oj his poem will secure it a permanent place in 
literature. . . . Mr. Patmore has fully earned a place in the catalogue 
of poets' by the finished idealization of domestic ///<>."— SATURDAY 
Review. 



32 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 



Rossetti. — Works by Christina Rossetti : — 

GOBLIN MARKET, AND OTHER POEMS. With two Designs 
by D. G. Rossetti. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 

"She handles her little marvel with that rare poetic discrimination which 
neither exhausts it of its simple wonders by pushing symbolism too far, nor 
keeps those zvonders in the merely fabulous and capricious stage. In fad 
she has produced a true children's poem , which is far more delightful to 
the mature than to children, though it would be delightful to all." — 
Spectator. 

THE PRINCE'S PROGRESS, AND OTHER POEMS. With 
two Designs by D. G. Rossetti. Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" Miss RossettV s poems are of the kind which recalls Shelley's definition 
of Poetry as the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and 
happiest minds. . . . They are like the piping of a bird on the spray in 
the sunshine, or the quaint singing with which a child amuses itself zuhe?i 
it forgets that anybody is listening.'''' — Saturday Review. 

Rossetti (W. M.).— DANTE'S HELL. See ''Dante." 

FINE ART, chiefly Contemporary. By William M. Rossetti. 
Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. 

This volume consists of Criticism on Contemporary Art, reprinted from 
Fraser, The Saturday Review, The Pall Mall Gazette, and other pub- 
lications. 

Roby.— STORY OF A HOUSEHOLD, AND OTHER POEMS. 
By Mary K. Roby. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. 

Shairp (Principal).— KILMAHOE, a Highland Pastoral, with 
other Poems. By John Campbell Shairp. Fcap. 8vo. 5-r. 

" Kilmahoe is a Highland Pastoral, redolent of the warm soft air of 
the Western Lochs and Moors, sketched out with remarkable grace and pic- 
turesqueness." — S atu rday Review. 



POETRY &- BELLES LETTRES. 33 



Smith. — Works by Alexander Smith : — 

A LIFE DRAMA, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d 

CITY POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 

EDWIN OF DEIRA. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. $s. 

"A poem which is marked by the strength, sustained sweetness, and 
compact texture of real life." — North British Review. 

Smith. — POEMS. By Catherine Barnard Smith. Fcap. 
8vo. 5j. 

" Wealthy in feeling, meaning, finish, and grace ; not without passion, 
which is suppressed, but the keener for that.''' — Athenaeum. 

Smith (Rev. Walter). — HYMNS OF CHRIST AND THE 
CHRISTIAN LIFE. By the Rev. Walter C. Smith, M.A. 
Fcap. 8vo. 6s. 

" These are among the sweetest sacred poems we have read for a long 
time. With no profuse imagery, expressing a range of feeling and 
expression by no means uncommon, they are true and elevated, and their 
pathos is profound and simple." — NONCONFORMIST. 

Stratford de Redcliffe (Viscount).— SHADOWS OF 
THE PAST, in Verse. By Viscount Stratford de Red- 
cliffe. Crown 8vo. ioj. 6d. 

" The vigorous words of one who has acted vigorously. They combine 
the fervour of politician and poet." — Guardian. 

Trench. — Works by R. Chenevix Trench, D.D., Archbishop 
of Dublin. See also Sections " Philosophy," "Theology," &c. 

POEMS. Collected and arranged anew. Fcap. 8vo. ys. 6d. 

ELEGIAC POEMS. Third Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 

c 



34 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Trench (Archbishop), {continued)— 

CALDERON'S LIFE'S A DREAM : The Great Theatre of the 
World. With an Essay on his Life and Genius. Fcap. 8vo. 
4s. 6d. 

HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENGLISH POETRY. Selected and 
arranged, with Notes, by R. C. Trench, D.D., Archbishop of 
Dublin. Extra fcap. 8vo. $s. 6d. 

This volume is called a " Household Booh," by this name implying that 
it is a book for all — that there is nothing in it to prevent it from being 
confidently placed in the hands of every member of the household. Speci- 
mens of all classes of poetry are given, including selections front living 
authors. The Editor has aimed to produce a book "which the emigrant, 
finding room for little not absolutely necessary, might yet find room for 
in his trunk, and the traveller in his knapsack, and that 011 some narrow 
shelves where there are few books this might be one." 

" The Archbishop has conferred in this delightful volume an important 
gift on the whole English-speaking population of the world." — Pall 
Mall Gazette. 



SACRED LATIN POETRY, Chiefly Lyrical. Selected and arranged 
for Use. Second Edition, Corrected and Improved. Fcap. 8vo. 

7s. 

" The aim of the present volume is to offer to members of our English 
Church a collection of the best sacred Latin poetry, such as they shall be 
able entirely and heartily to accept and approve — a collection, that is, in which 
they shall not be evermore liable to be of ended, and to have the current oj 
their sympathies checked, by coming upon that which, however beautiful as 
poetry, out of higher respects they must reject and condemn — in which, too, 
they shall not fear that snares are being laid for them, to entangle them 
unazvares in admiration for ought which is inconsistent with their faith 
and fealty to their own spiritual mother." — Preface. 



POETRY &- BELLES LETTRES. 35 

Turner. — SONNETS. By the Rev. Charles Tennyson 
Turner. Dedicated to his brother, the Poet Laureate. Fcap. 
8vo. 4J. 6d. 

" The Sonnets are dedicated to Mr. Tennyson by his brother, and have, 
independently of their merits, an interest of association. They both love to 
write in simple expressive Saxon; both love to touch their imagery in 
epithets rather than in formal similes ; both have a delicate perception 
of rythmical movement, and thus Mr. Turner has occasional lines which, 
for phrase and music, might be ascribed to his brother. . . He knows the 
haunts of the wild rose, the shady nooks where light quivers through the 
leaves, the ruralities, in short, of the land of imagination." — ATHEN/EUM. 

SMALL TABLEAUX. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. 

" These brief poems have not only a peculiar kind of interest for the 
student of English poetry, but are intrinsically delightful, and will reward 
a careful and frequent perusal. Full of naivete, piety, love, and kucnvledge 
of natural objects, and each expressing a single and generally a simple 
subject by means of minute and original pictorial touches, these sonnets 
have a place of their own." — Pall Mall Gazette. 



Vittoria Colonna. — LIFE AND POEMS. By Mrs. Henry 
Roscoe. Crown 8vo. gs. 

The life of Vittoria Colonna, the celebrated Marchesa di Pescara, has 
received but cursory notice from any Puglish writer, though in every 
history of Italy her name is mentioned with great honour among the poets 
of the sixteenth century. "In three hundred and fifty years," says %er 
biographer Visconti, "there has been no other Italian lady who can be 
compared to herP 

"It is written with good taste, with quick and intelligent sympathy, 
occasionally with a real freshness and charm of style"— Pall Mall 
Gazette. 



Webster. — Works by AUGUSTA WEBSTER : — 
DRAMATIC STUDIES. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5j. 

"A volume as strongly marked by perfect taste as by poetic power.' 1 '' 

Nonconformist. 

PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS. Literally translated 
into English Verse. Extra fcap. 8vo. ~$s. 6d. 

" Closeness and sii?iplicity combined with literary skill." — ATHEN^UM. 

MEDEA OF EURIPIDES. Literally translated into English Verse. 
Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
" Mrs. Webster s translation surpasses our utmost expectations. It is a 
photograph of the original without any of that harshness which so often 
accoi?ipanies a photography— Westminster Review. 

A WOMAN SOLD, AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 7-r. 6d. 
"Mrs. Webster has shown us that she is able to draw admirably from 
the life; that she can observe with subtlety, and render her observations 
with delicacy ; that she can impersonate complex conceptions, and venture 
into which few living writers canfolloxv her." — Guardian. 

Woolner. — MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. By Thomas Woolner. 

With a Vignette by Arthur Hughes. Third Edition. Fcap. 

8vo. 5-r. 
" It is clearly the product of no idle hour, but a highly-conceived and 
faithfully-executed task, self-imposed, and prompted by that inward yearn- 
ing to titter great thoughts, and a wealth of passionate feeling which is 
poetic genius. No man can read this poem without being struck by the 
fitness and finish of the workmanship, so to speak, as well as by the chas- 
tened and unpretending loftiness of thought which pervades the whole." 

Globe. 

WORDS FROM THE POETS. Selected by the Editor of " Rays of 
Sunlight." With a Vignette and Frontispiece. i8mo. Extra 
cloth gilt. 2 s. 6d. Cheaper Edition, l8mo. limp., is. 



GLOBE EDITIONS. 

Under the title GLOBE EDITIONS, the Publishers are 
issuing a uniform Series of Standard English Authors, 
carefully edited, clearly and elegantly printed on toned 
paper, strongly bound, and at a small cost. The names of 
the Editors whom they have been fortunate enough to 
secure constitute an indisputable guarantee as to the 
character of the Series. The greatest care has been taken 
to ensure accuracy of text; adequate notes, elucidating 
historical, literary, and philological points, have been sup- 
plied ; and, to the older Authors, glossaries are appended. 
The series is especially adapted to Students of our national 
Literature ; while the small price places good editions of 
certain books, hitherto popularly inaccessible, within the 
reach of all. 



Shakespeare.— THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM 
SHAKESPEARE. Edited by W. G. Clark and W. Aldjs 
Wright. Ninety-first Thousand. Globe Svo. y. 6d. 

11 A marvel of beauty-, cheapness, and compactness. The whole works — 

plays, poems, and sonnets — are contained in one small volume: yet the 
page is perfectly clear and readable. . . . For the busy man, ai 
for the working Student, the Globe Edition is the best of all existing 
Shakespeare books."— A 1 1 1 i ..\ i:u m. 



38 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

Morte D'Arthur. — SIR THOMAS MALORY'S BOOK OF 
KING ARTHUR AND OF HIS NOBLE KNIGHTS OF 
THE ROUND TABLE. The Edition of Caxton, revised for 
Modern Use. With an Introduction by Sir Edward Strachey, 
Bart. Globe 8vo. $s. 6d. Third Edition. 

" It is with the most perfect confidence that we recommend this edition of 
the old romance to every class of readers" — Pall Mall Gazette. 

Scott. — THE POETICAL WORKS OF SIR WALTER 
SCOTT. With Biographical Essay, by F. T. Palgrave. 
Globe 8vo. $s. 6d. New Edition. 

"As a popular edition it leaves nothing to be desired. The want of 
such an one has long been felt, combining real excellence with cheapness." 

Spectator. 

* 

Burns. — THE POETICAL WORKS AND LETTERS OF 
ROBERT BURNS. Edited, with Life, by Alexander Smith. 
Globe 8vo. 3-r. 6d. Second Edition. 

" The works of the bard have never been offered in such a complete form 
in a single volume." — Glasgow Daily Herald. 
"Admirable in all respects." — Spectator. 



Robinson Crusoe.— the ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON 

CRUSOE. By Defoe. Edited, from the Original Edition, by 
J. W. Clark, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
With Introduction by Henry Kingsley. Globe Svo. $r. 6d. 

" The Globe Edition of Robinson Crusoe is a book to have and to keep. 
It is printed after the original editions, with the quaint old spelling, and 
is published in admirable style as regards type, paper, and binding. A 
well-tvritten and genial biographical introduction, by Mr. Henry Kingsley, 
is likewise an attractive feature of this edition." — Morning Star. 



GLOBE EDITIONS. 39 

Goldsmith. — GOLDSMITH'S MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 

With Biographical Essay by Professor MASSON. Globe 8vo. 
3-r. 6d. 

This edition includes the whole of Goldsmith 's Miscellaneous Works — 
the Vicar of Wakefield, Plays, Poems, &c. Of the memoir the SCOTSMAN 
newspaper writes: "Such an admirable compendium of the facts of 
Golds?/iilh , s life, and so careful and minute a delineation of the mixed 
traits of his peculiar character, as to be a very model of a literary 
biography." 

Pope.— THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE. 

Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by Professor Ward. Globe 
8vo. 3-r. 6d. 

" The book is handsome and handy. . . . The notes are many, and 
the matter of them is rich in interest." — Athenaeum. 

Spenser. — THE COMPLETE WORKS OF EDMUND 
SPENSER. Edited from the Original Editions and Manuscripts, 
by R. Morris, Member of the Council of the Philological Society. 
With a Memoir by J. W. Hales, M.A., late Fellow of Christ's 
College, Cambridge, Member of the Council of the Philological 
Society. Globe 8vo. y. 6d. 

" A complete and clearly printed edition of the whole works of Spenser, 
carefully collated with the originals, with copious glossary, worthy — and 
higher praise it needs not — of the beautiful Globe Series. The -work is 
edited with all the care so noble a poet deserves." — Daily News. 



%* Other Standard Works arc in the Press. 

-* The Volumes of this Scries may also be had in a variety ofmorocco 
and calf bindings at very moderate Prices, 



GOLDEN TREASURY SERIES. 

Uniformly printed in i8mo., with Vignette Titles by Sir 
Noel Paton, T. Woolner, W. Holman Hunt, J. E. 
Millais, Arthur Hughes, &c. Engraved on Steel by 
Jeens. Bound in extra cloth, 4s. 6d. each volume. Also 
kept in morocco. 

' ' Messrs. Macmillan have, in their Golden Treasury Series especially, 
provided editions of standard works, volumes of selected poetry, and 
original compositions, which entitle this series to be called classical. 
Nothing can be better than the literary execution, nothing more elegant 
than the material zvorkmanship." — British Quarterly Review. 



THE GOLDEN TREASURY OF THE BEST SONGS AND 
LYRICAL POEMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 

Selected and arranged, with Notes, by Francis Turner 
Palgrave. 

" This delightful little volume, the Golden Treasury, which contains 
many of the best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language, grouped 
with care and skill, so as to illustrate each other like the pictures in a 
well-arranged gallery. ' ' — Q uarterly Review. 

THE CHILDREN'S GARLAND FROM THE BEST POETS. 
Selected and arranged by Coventry Patmore. 

"It includes specimens of all the great masters in the art oj poetry, 
selected with the matured judgment of a matt concentrated on obtaining 
insight into the feelings and tastes of childhood, and desirous to awaken its 
finest impulses, to cultivate its keenest sensibilities" — Morning Post. 



GOLDEN TREASURY SERIES. 41 

THE BOOK OF PRAISE. From the Best English Hymn Writers. 
Selected and arranged by Sir Roundell Palmer. A New and 
Enlarged Edition. 

" All prroious compilations of this kind must undeniably for the present 
give place to the Book of Praise. . . . The selection has been made 
throughout with sound judgment and critical taste. The pains involved 
hi this compilation must have been immense, embracing, as it does, ez'ery 
writer of note in this special province of English literature, and ranging 
over the most zoidely divergent tracts of religious thought." — SATURDAY 
Review. 

THE FAIRY BOOK ; the Best Popular Fairy Stories. Selected and 

rendered anew by the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman." 

"A delightful selection, in a delightful external form : full of the 

physical splendour and vast opulence of proper fairy tales." — Spectator. 

THE BALLAD BOOK. A Selection of the Choicest British Ballads. 
Edited by William Alli.ngiiam. 

" His taste as a judge of old poetry will be found, by all acquainted with 
the various readings of old English ballads, true enough to justify his 
undertaking so critical a task." — SATURDAY REVIEW. 

THE JEST BOOK. The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings. Selected 
and arranged by Mark Lemon. 

" The fullest and best jest book that has yet appeared?' — SATURDAY 
Review. 

BACON'S ESSAYS AND COLOURS OF GOOD AND EVIL. 
With Notes and Glossarial Index. By W. Aldis Wright, M.a. 

" The beautiful Utile edition of Bacon's Essays, HOW before us, does 
credit to the taste and scholarship of Mr. Alt/is Wright. . . . J t puts the 
reader in possession of all the essential literary facts and chronology 
necessary for reading the Essays in connexion with Bacon's life and 
times." — Spectator. 

" By far the most complete as well as the most elegant edition we 
possess.'' — WESTMINS i BR REVIEW. 

D 



42 GENERAL CATALOGUE. 

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS from this World to that which is to 
come. By John Bunyan. 

11 A beautifztl and scholarly reprint." — SPECTATOR. 

THE SUNDAY BOOK OF POETRY FOR THE YOUNG. 
Selected and arranged by C. F. Alexander. 

" A well-selected 'volume of sacred poetry" — Spectator. 

A BOOK OF GOLDEN DEEDS of all Times and all Countries. 
Gathered and narrated anew. By the Author of " The Heir of 
Redclyffe." 

"... To the young, for whom it is especially intended, as a most interesting 
collection of thrilling tales well told ; and to their elders, as a useful hand- 
hook of reference, and a pleasant one to take tip when their wish is to while 
away a weary half-hour. We have seen no prettier gift-book for a long 
timer — Athenaeum. 

THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS. Edited, with 
Biographical Memoir, Notes, and Glossary, by Alexander 
Smith. Two Vols. 

"Beyond all question this is the most beautiful edition of Bums 
yet out." — Edinburgh Daily Review. 

THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE. Edited from 
the Original Edition by J. W. Clark, M.A., Fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge. 

"Mutilated and modified editions of this English classic are so much 
the rule, that a cheap and pretty copy of it, rigidly exact to the original, 
will be a prize to many book-buyers." — Examiner. 

THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO. Translated into English, with 
Notes, by J. LI. Davies, M.A. and D. J. Vaughan, M.A. 

"A dainty and cheap little edition." — EXAMINER. 



GOLDEN TREASURY SERIES. 43 

THE SONG BOOK. Words and Tunes from the best Poets and 
Musicians. Selected and arranged by John Hullah, Professor 
of Vocal Music in King's College, London. 

" A choice collection of the sterling songs of England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, with the music of each prefixed to the words. How much true 
wholesome pleasure such a book can diffise, and will diffuse, we trust, 
through many thousand families." — EXAMINER. 



LA LYRE FRANCAISE. Selected and arranged, with Notes, by 
Gustave Masson, French Master in Harrow School. 

A selection of the best French songs and lyrical pieces. 



TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. By an Old Boy. 

il A perfect gem of a book. The best and ?nost healthy book about boys 
for boys that ever was written.''' 1 — Illustrated Times. 



A BOOK OF WORTHIES. Gathered from the Old Histories and 
written anew by the Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." 
With Vignette. 

11 An admirable edition to an admirable series." 

Westminster Review. 



LONDON : 

R. CLAY, SONS,, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,, 

BREAD STREET HILL. 






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